All Souls Day
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: At Halloween, a series of mysterious deaths and accidents leave Firehouse 51 searching for answers...then one of their own becomes a victim.
1. Chapter 1

All Souls Day

Matt Casey heard himself sigh, and he heard himself moan. He felt weird. Not in pain exactly, but something wasn't right. He tried opening his eyes, but everything was black, he blinked, still nothing, and he started to panic. He tried to think back, but his memory was foggy. Still, it seemed somebody had to be with him. Frantically he started to call out, and was surprised to hear how weak his voice sounded, "Severide? Kelly? Kelly!"

He felt a presence near him, and he heard Severide's voice, it sounded like he was standing over Casey.

"It's alright, Casey, everything's going to be alright, just calm down."

"Kelly...what's going on? I can't see!"

"It's okay, buddy, you're in the hospital. You got bandages over your eyes."

"What?" Casey heard his voice go up an octave in fear.

Severide was quick to reassure him, "It's alright, it's alright, you had an accident, but you're going to be fine."

Casey tried to shake his head, but he had trouble moving it.

"What _aren't_ you telling me?" Casey asked, feeling a knot of fear building up in his stomach.

Severide might've been able to fake a calm, cool and collective voice, but the undercurrent of worry in his tone was still unmistakable despite his best attempts.

"Casey, you're going to be fine."

"Kelly!" Casey tried to scream but couldn't, "What's wrong with me?"

"I promise, I'll explain it all to you later...but right now, the doctors are going to give you something to relax, you need to rest and let them do their job."

"Kelly!"

"I promise, I'll tell you all about it when you wake up," Severide told him.

Casey tried to shake his head again and heard the pitch of his own tone waver all across the map with unconcentrated terror, "No, don't go, don't leave me, _tell me_ what's going on!"

"Buddy, you have to hold still right now, everything's going to be fine," Kelly replied.

"Kelly!" Casey felt a sob work its way up from his chest that he didn't know was there.

He felt Severide's hand on the back of his head, but it felt weird, like there was something between his hand and Casey's hair, but he couldn't tell what it was. He reached up with both hands trying to find Severide and grab hold of his hand, but his hands felt very strange, he couldn't tell what it was, but they felt bulky and padded and he couldn't bend his fingers.

"You're going to be fine, Casey," Kelly tried to assure him. "You just need to go to sleep so your body can heal."

"Kelly..."

But even Casey could hear his own voice slipping away. This wasn't sedation, they were putting him in a medically induced coma, something was seriously wrong and they didn't want him conscious for it. He continued to futilely beg Severide to tell him what was going on, to stay with him, but he felt himself drifting further, and further, and further away, the last thing he heard was the muffled sound of Severide's assurances everything would be alright.

* * *

Kelly Severide maintained the best composure he could for Casey's sake, then he held himself together just long enough to leave the wing of Chicago Med that Casey was being treated in, and he _just_ got to the hall before he broke down sobbing. Otis and Cruz had been standing by for any news and they both turned at the sound of the Squad lieutenant bawling as he doubled over and pressed a hand to his mouth to futilely try and stifle the screaming sobs that were tearing loose from the confines of his chest and throat. They were on him in a flash and pulled him up and locked their arms around him in an awkward group hug, what happened tonight had left them all shaken and in need of reassurance of each other's presence.

"How is he?" Otis barely managed to get out.

Kelly shook his head and closed his eyes as he tried to push the last image of Casey from his mind. They'd seen plenty of people in this position before, but excluding children, nothing was worse than when it was one of their own.

Cruz's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Breathe, Severide, you're turning purple!"

Kelly sucked in a large breath but all that accomplished was letting out another series of high pitched wails as he leaned against the two other men for support. It was several minutes before he could pull himself together enough to even talk.

"He looks horrible," Severide told them as he pulled away from them, "I just keep hearing him screaming."

The firemen saw Will Halstead headed their way, he'd been the one to initially examine Casey when he was brought in.

"Will, _tell me_ he's going to be alright," Severide pleaded desperately.

"Kelly, he's going to have some of the best doctors in this state working on him, they will do every-"

"Don't tell me they'll do their best, that's all you ever tell people, _tell me_ he's going to be alright!" Kelly screamed at the doctor.

Will maintained his calm disposition and responded, "I can appreciate how hard this is, Kelly. Matt's looking at a very long and painful recovery, but assuming there are no complications, in a few months he should be fine."

" _Months_?" Otis asked.

"Oh man," Cruz groaned. Instinctively, they _knew_ that that was what they were looking at, but it hadn't really clicked for them until now.

"We will keep you updated on his condition," Will told Severide, "we will let you know if there's any improvement. We're going to keep him in a medically induced coma for the time being so that his body can heal with as little physical and emotional strain on it as possible."

There were a few further words before Will left, Severide felt his legs getting weak and he leaned against the wall for support and sighed, "I can't take this."

"Me either," Otis said, "it's just like all the others."

* * *

One week earlier-

It was the morning after Halloween and 2nd Watch was just getting started. Everybody had gotten changed into their uniforms and were ready to face the freezing cold day. From the apparatus floor they could see the sun was _just_ starting to come up in an otherwise gray and dreary sky. Also from where they stood, they could see somebody heading their way. At first glance, nothing seemed unusual, but as the person got closer, the firefighters could make out that it was a young woman, possibly a teenage girl, who appeared to be zombie walking towards the fire house.

"Whoa, looks like somebody partied too hard last night," Otis said jokingly.

As the girl got closer to the firehouse, they noticed that something was _off_ about her. For one thing, it was barely 30 degrees out with the windchill and she had no jacket, she just wore a thin T-shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers. Her wavy brown hair was pressed flat on one side of her head and and standing up on the other like she'd just woken up, but her eyes looked like she hadn't slept in days. As she inched her way closer, 'zombie walk' didn't seem quite appropriate, more to the point, _mummy_ walking, one foot dragging behind her and one arm pressed against her chest, the other was outstretched as if in invitation to them, who started to suspect this was more than just a high school kid coming down off a wild night partying.

She inched her way up the apron and got within ten feet of the firefighters and croaked out a half audible, "Help..." then another, slightly more coherent, "help," and then she stopped walking, and fell on her knees and landed flat on her face.

That sent all of them running to see what was the matter. And as they reached the girl, they all saw that the back of her shirt had large rips clear across the fabric, the skinny strands in between the rips that were still intact were covered in half dried blood, stemming from the four large cuts across the girl's back that all trailed from one side to the other in a diagonal line, and all of them looking like something very large had clawed clear through her shirt and flesh.

"What the hell is that?" Otis asked.

Casey grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up for a better look. Whatever it was had made four perfect claw marks from her right shoulder down to her left flank and ripped clear through her shirt and the back of her bra. He had no idea _what_ made the marks, but whoever or whatever it was had been determined, there were _no_ hesitation marks, just clean across.

Sylvie rushed out pulling on a pair of gloves to examine the girl. She was hypothermic from being out in the cold all night and bordering on unconsciousness, the cuts on her back, unsightly and painful to be sure, were actually little more than superficial and should quickly heal. They got the girl strapped on a gurney and loaded up in Ambo which tore out for Med with lights flashing and siren blaring.

There hadn't been time to focus on what just happened or even ask what it was all about, because then the bells went off and a dispatch message came through about a fire. They got the address, suited up in their turnout gear and took off. The address wasn't one they were familiar with, and when they pulled up to the old cemetery, Casey was scratching his head if this wasn't one last minute Halloween prank on the CFD.

However, they quickly found it was definitely not a prank call, as there _was_ a fire somewhere in the middle of the cemetery, but it was _not_ a large one and was easily put out with a couple of extinguishers

"What the hell was that?" Herrmann asked when it was finally out. "Who the hell comes to a graveyard and sets somebody's final resting place on fire?"

"Must've been somebody not well liked," Cruz commented as they stood around the burn site.

Otis tried to get a closer look at the tombstone to see if it was anybody they knew, but the stone was too old and faded to make anything out. Glancing around he saw that all of them were old, this was a burnt out part of town where nobody had lived for years, and he guessed the same was true for being buried out there. He turned back to the others to shake his head, then he saw something.

"Hey guys," he called absently as he looked straight ahead, "You see that?"

The others looked around to see what he was talking about, but nothing stuck out.

"See what, Otis?" Casey asked.

Brian went over to another set of tombstones and took something off of one. It was a jean jacket that had been bunched up on the stone. He grabbed it by the collar and let it fall into its regular shape, and revealed four large tears in the back.

"Look familiar?" he asked.

The others looked at it in awe and confusion, nobody able to make any sense of it.

"What the hell went on here?" Herrmann asked under his breath.

That's what they all wanted to know. Casey looked back at the blackened remains where the fire was. It hadn't been burning long, it had been relatively contained. That girl back at the firehouse had clearly been out in the elements all night, and it didn't seem likely that that mutilated jacket could've been anybody but hers, but someone had only recently come here, piled up a bunch of garbage and started that fire. And who called it in? And what were the odds that call would come in just as she was being transported to Med? Casey especially had an unshakable feeling that something was amiss, he didn't know what it was, but he decided to check in back at 51. As they loaded up their equipment he took out his phone and made a quick call to Severide.

"Everything okay there?" he asked.

"Yeah, why? What's up?" Kelly asked.

"This call we got," Casey said as he looked around the cemetery, as if he was expecting to find the answer just laying around somewhere. "I can't put my finger on it, but I have a feeling it was just to get us out of the firehouse. Are you sure everything's okay there?"

"Yeah," Severide answered, "nothing's happening."

"Alright, we should be back soon, all the same, keep an eye out for anything strange."

"Casey," Severide replied in an unamused tone, "it's Chicago the day after Halloween, you might as well say 'don't breathe'."

Casey hung up, and a minute later Otis came around, still holding the jacket.

"Lieutenant, if I might say something."

"What is it, Otis?"

"There's probably no connection, but this reminds me of something," Brian said.

"Let me guess," Casey said, "Nightmare on Elm Street?"

"No, actually, an old folktale from Norway."

Casey raised one eyebrow inquisitively.

"I have a cousin," Brian explained. "Anyway, the story goes a woman wakes up early one morning and thinks she's overslept for church, so she rushes through the dark streets, cuts across the cemetery to get to the church, it's dark inside, she sits down, place is full of people she's never seen. Finally comes across a familiar face, problem is the woman's been dead for months. Then she looks around and realizes she's stumbled on a church service for the dead, the pews are filled with ghosts and skeletons, her deceased friend warns her to leave right after the service if she wants to live. Needless to say trying to sneak out doesn't work, the ghosts chase her out of the church, through the cemetery, tear away her hat and coat, and chase her until she reaches the street, then they disappear. She starts to seriously wonder if she's just dreamt the whole thing...then later a friend comes over with the shredded remnants of her coat and hat which were found in the cemetery."

Casey tried to take in what Brian was saying, but it didn't really click.

"You think she was attacked by a ghost?"

"I'm not sure, all I know is as far as coincidences go, you couldn't set it up much better, old cemetery," Brian pointed across the street, "very old church that probably hasn't seen any use in 20 years, granted it would probably have to be a Norwegian ghost for it to all come together."

"Otis," Casey said in a 'get to the point' tone.

"I'm just saying something seems very off here," Brian told him.

"Only _one_ thing?" Casey replied.

* * *

By lunch, everybody had gotten their food and gathered around the common room to eat. Casey sat at the table and just stared straight ahead, his eyes not focusing on anything.

"Hey Casey, you alright?" Severide asked.

"Huh?" The Truck lieutenant's eyes still didn't register with anything.

Now the others started to notice as well. Otis chimed in, "What's the matter, lieutenant, Voight slash your tires again?"

"Huh?" Casey blinked and slowly started to come around, then shook his head, "No, just thinking about that call earlier."

"So what happened anyway?" Kelly asked.

"I don't know," Casey said as he poked at his food with his fork, "We stopped by Med, apparently they found out who the girl was, called her parents, they were there, identified the jacket as hers, have no idea what happened, they were waiting for the doctor to get done looking at her."

"You think she set the fire at the cemetery?" Tony asked.

Casey shook his head, "It's a five mile drive from there to here, moving on foot and in her condition, that fire would've burnt out long before we got there if she did it."

"And I'm just guessing she didn't maul herself either," Otis commented, "so the question is...what the hell happened?"

* * *

That afternoon Casey was in his office writing up a report when he heard his door open. Generally everybody knew to knock before entering, so this sudden intrusion caught him off guard and he about jumped up from his chair. He turned and saw that it wasn't anybody from 51, but instead it was Antonio Dawson, who looked like hell, and before Casey could say anything, the Intelligence detective raised a warning finger to be quiet, and marched over to Casey's bunk and said as he promptly plopped down on it, "I need to close my eyes for two minutes before I talk to anyone else."

Casey turned around in his chair and looked at the cop on his bed and said, "I've heard this expression before, never actually seen anyone that it fits."

Antonio had his face buried in the pillow but grunted something that actually sounded like he was asking Casey what it was.

"'You look like the morning after Halloween', so I guess you're having a day like we are," Casey said.

Antonio picked his head up and responded, "Try a whole week."

"So what're you doing here?"

Antonio turned over and sat up on the bed and asked Casey, "You guys had that teen girl collapse out front today, right?"

"Yeah, how is she?"

"Hell if I know," Antonio said, "found out who she is though. Lena Bryant, age 17, senior in high school, parents said she was supposed to go to a Halloween party with friends last night. Her friends say she never showed up, and it sounds like it was just a cover story to go somewhere else. So far _nobody_ has any idea where she was really going. Did she say anything before she collapsed?"

Casey thought back. "'Help'."

"That's it?" Antonio asked.

"She was pretty out of it."

"Did anybody else hear her say it?" Antonio asked.

"Yeah, we were all out there," Casey said, "why?"

"She's not talking," he answered.

That surprised Casey. "She's not saying who attacked her?"

"She's not saying _anything_ , Casey. The doctor, the cops, her parents, they've all been in to see her, she's not said _one_ word to any of them. I thought I'd double check she was actually verbal before the shock set in."

"Not much, but yeah."

"Well, doctors got her body temperature up, she's got her whole back bandaged up, physically she's recovering, but nobody can figure out why the hell she's not talking," Antonio said.

"And...Intelligence is looking into this _why_ exactly?" Casey asked.

Antonio sighed. "There's a possibility it's connected to a few homicides we've been investigating the past week."

"What?"

"The injuries she sustained don't really match, but they're not entirely out of the ballpark either," Antonio explained. "Three drug dealers, all of whom have been a major pain in Narcotics' ass for years, all killed in a week. So far we can't find any connection between them and this girl, but we'll find out more later, there was some kind of screw up with her tox screen at the hospital so we have to wait to find out if she had anything in her system. If she _was_ on something, that might be the connection, if not we're back to square one. Get this though, the third dealer was laying dead out in his own yard for _two days_ before anybody called it in, apparently everybody just thought it was a clever Halloween decoration...until he started to decay anyway."

Casey grunted and remarked, "That's brutal."

"Everybody has their hands full today, lot of reports of people who didn't come home after last night, a lot of them teenagers, I remember when Halloween _night_ was the busiest part of the season."

The bells went off and another call was coming from dispatch about a house fire.

" _Every_ day is the busiest part of the season for us," Casey said as he got up to leave.


	2. Chapter 2

They arrived at a two-story house and saw black smoke pouring out of the windows at the end of the driveway. In the front yard were two black women in their 30s, one had the other wrapped up in a blanket and appeared to be restraining her.

"What happened?" Casey asked as they got out of the truck.

"This is my neighbor, Charlene Peterson," the first woman told them as she kept a strong hold on the other, who leaned against her and was screaming and crying in pain. "I live next door, I saw a fire in the kitchen windows and ran over...she ran out here screaming, her clothes were on fire, I got her down and smothered them, I didn't know what else to do."

"EMTs will take it from here, they'll need you to answer some questions," Casey said as they got ready to go in.

They went in the front door and saw the fire was still limited to the kitchen, the curtains were long since gone and now the fire was working its way through 7 layers of old wallpaper. They were able to get the worst of it out with a couple of extinguishers, then opened the rest of the windows and the back door to get the smoke out.

The wall where the fire had spread was on the opposite side of the room from the stove, but there _was_ a burner on, the front left burner next to the sink. Cruz went over and turned it off.

"There's nothing here," he said, stating the obvious since everybody could see there was nothing on the stove, it looked relatively clean aside from usual wear and tear from years of regular use, there was no grease on the stovetop or around the burner, no pans with anything heating that could've caught fire, it didn't make any sense.

"So what happened?" Mouch asked, "How does a fire over _here_ , get all the way over _there_?"

Everybody looked around trying to find what could possibly have started the fire, but nothing obvious stuck out. The kitchen was well kept, aside from the fire damage, nothing was out of place, everything was neatly organized, the table wasn't cluttered up, one side of the sink counter had a dish rack on it full of plates and silverware, the other side of the counter housed a bottle of dish soap, a dish brush and scratcher, containers for the utensils, a bacon press, a bottle of cooking oil and a coffee can full of bacon grease that were too far from the stove to do any damage, and...

"Oh no," Casey groaned as he saw the opened bottle of nail polish sitting on the countertop, the lid was off and the brush had by now become glued to the countertop when its brown sparkle contents got exposed to the open air and dried up.

* * *

"That woman had second and third degree burns clear up her arms," Sylvie told the guys when they returned to 51, "from there it just spread to her blouse and then presumably the curtains when she was running around screaming in a panic."

"Did she say anything?" Otis asked.

"Briefly, for the most part she was in too much pain, but when we asked if she knew what happened before the fire, she said she was doing her nails."

"Think she'll recover?" Cruz asked.

"If she does, it's going to be a bad one," Sylvie said.

"So there's an open bottle of nail polish _right_ next to the stove where a burner's turned on," Herrmann didn't get it. "Don't women know that stuff's flammable?"

" _Why_ was the burner on in the first place?" Casey asked. "There wasn't anything cooking, there were no pans on the stove, I didn't even see a coffee pot."

"Besides, as soon as her hands caught fire, the sink's _right_ there, why didn't she turn on the water and put it out?" Cruz asked.

"If her shirt only caught fire _after_ the fire already spread up her arms, _how_ did it spread from her nails? It might've singed the hairs off but it wouldn't have gone straight up her arms," Otis said.

"Not without some kind of accelerant anyway," Severide remarked.

"Now there're a lot of stupid people have all kinds of crazy accidents around the house," Herrmann said, "but unless this woman doused herself in gasoline and turned the knob, nothing about this makes any sense."

"What would make sense about _that_?" Otis asked. Then a thought seemed to come to him and he got a distant look in his eyes and bit the corner of his lip.

Casey noticed this and asked, "Otis, something you'd like to share with the rest of us?"

Brian came back to the discussion and shrugged it off, "Oh nothing, lieutenant..." but the look in his eyes said otherwise.

"I thought Halloween was supposed to be the day all the nutsos were running around on the loose," Herrmann said, "did they hold it over or something?"

"You know," Mouch told him, "Halloween originally lasted for _three_ days...maybe somebody's got a touch for history."

"Three days of crap like this?" Herrmann groaned and shook his head.

The bells went off again.

"I guess we're gonna find out," Casey said as he put his jacket back on.

* * *

The next call was another fire at a cemetery several miles away from the first one, but this one was nothing like the first. This was a raging inferno that had spanned across four rows of graves. It was another older cemetery that was off the beaten path and there weren't any immediate neighbors, there was also no hydrant in the vicinity so they exhausted the 1,000 gallons of water in the engine's tank, anything that was still burning after that was doused with the new extinguishers they'd loaded on the truck earlier in the day. Now that the fire was out, the men from 51 quickly realized there was a bigger problem than the ground surrounding 40 tombs being burnt down to the soil and the stones being blackened from the flames. Casey used his radio to tell dispatch to call CPD, and he specifically requested the 21st District, as he had a feeling Antonio would want to know about their discovery.

Within an hour, there were 20 police vehicles lined up at the cemetery gates, and a whole roll of crime scene tape had been used to cordon off various areas from any passersby.

"What the _hell_ happened here?" Hank Voight wanted to know as he looked at the pile of charred bodies found near the scene.

"That seems to be the question of the day," Otis commented.

Casey shook his head. "When we got here, this whole section was engulfed in flames. I can't say how long it was burning but there was definitely a lot of accelerator used because the fire must've been about seven, eight feet high."

Any firefighter saw more charred bodies in his life than anybody should have to, and if you worked at an active firehouse that was doubly true, and Casey himself had lost count of how many fire victims they'd found during secondary searches when it was too late to do anything, but all his years of experience in this field still could not prepare him for what they'd stumbled upon, and despite all his training, he couldn't dissociate from this enough that he wouldn't puke his guts up if he didn't get out of the immediate area soon. It wasn't just the bodies, it wasn't the state they were in, it was how many there were, and how young they were.

A dozen bodies, maybe more, all of them high school kids, some just barely, only some of them were burnt, the way they were strewn on the ground around one another it was obvious that none had died from the fire and were only burnt postmortem, though some may have succumbed to smoke inhalation, but most, the ones with few or no char marks on their skin or clothing, were all sprawled neatly on the ground, almost as if they'd just gone to sleep.

Casey swallowed and told the Intelligence sergeant, "Sorry, I've got to..." but he didn't finish, he walked away, and made it just outside the wrought iron gate before he doubled over and threw up.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Squad truck coming up the street, it pulled over along the gate and loudly stopped. Severide hopped out with a couple bottles of water and went over to the Truck lieutenant.

"We were on call when we heard you with dispatch, you okay, Casey?" he asked as he held one bottle out to him.

Casey straightened his spine, took the bottle, drank a mouthful, spit it back out and told him, "They're dead, they're all dead."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, it's...a dozen kids, maybe more, all of them just sprawled on the ground, somebody set a bonfire in the middle of it all." He shook his head, "I've never seen anything like it."

"Casey," Antonio exited through the gates and came over to them.

Matt turned to Dawson and demanded to know, "Is _that_ ballpark, Antonio?"

Antonio kept cool and told Casey, "We're going to figure this out."

"What is it, some kind of cult thing?" Severide asked, "a mass suicide?"

"We don't know yet," Antonio answered. He turned to the other lieutenant and told him, "Casey, there's nothing more you guys can do, just head back to 51 and we'll take it from here."

Casey jabbed a finger in the direction of the gate, "Who..."

"We'll find out who they are and we'll notify their parents," Antonio said.

"Is it connected to the girl from this morning?" Severide asked.

"When I find out, you'll be the first to know," Dawson replied.

* * *

"Alright, everybody," Boden addressed his men when they returned and gathered in the common room, "in light of what's been going on today, I'm having Chaplain Orlovsky come down here and counsel anybody who needs it. Anybody got anything to say, take it up with him. This has been a very unusual shift, we don't need any unresolved issues coming back and biting us later."

"Better keep him on standby, Chief," Herrmann said, "I got a feeling that we ain't seen the end of all this gobbledygook."

"You know something we don't, Herrmann?" Cruz asked.

"Just that I talked to the guys from 1st Watch and they say yesterday was fairly uneventful, so you _know_ all that craziness is gonna come in from somewhere."

"So..." Cruz raised a questioning hand, "do we think there's a connection between the torched graveyards and that woman that set herself on fire today?"

"I don't know what it'd be, even the two cemeteries barely look connected," Otis said, "one has a little trash fire and a girl who walks out, the other one has a bonfire and 12 dead bodies. I mean if we're real about this, how many times does something weird happen in cemeteries at Halloween? More than anybody wants to think about."

"There's a big difference in knocking over a few headstones and slaughtering 12 kids and burning the place down, Otis," Herrmann felt a need to remind him.

Brett passed by and commented, "All I know is when this shift is over, I'm going somewhere and drinking heavily. We just got back from a call...this guy cut open his whole face with an electric knife...he said he was shaving."

The men all looked around at each other in confusion and disgust.

"He make it?" Otis asked.

"For now," Sylvie answered and shook her head, "I've seen a lot of stoners do some stupid stuff but I've _never_ seen anything like this. If he _does_ live, he's going to have one long, _painful_ recovery."

With that, she sauntered off down the corridor. Casey took off in the other direction and answered his phone.

"What's going on here?" Herrmann wanted to know, "Has everybody outside this firehouse completely lost their minds?"

"It's almost like the pod people are taking over," Otis commented.

"I never saw _any_ pod like this," Mouch felt a need to interject.

Casey put his phone back in his pocket and came back towards the others and said, "That was Antonio, Intelligence isn't sure yet if all the cases are connected or not, but he stopped at the hospital to speak to that woman who set her hands on fire."

"And?" Mouch asked.

"She said the last thing she remembered was putting on lotion, painting her nails, and turning on a fan to dry them," Casey said.

The guys all looked around at each other again in question.

"There was no fan in that kitchen," Otis said.

"And only the nail polish, no lotion," Herrmann added.

Casey nodded, then his eyes glazed over, and he looked at them like a man possessed, and remarked, "But there _was_ a bottle of cooking oil."

Brian's mouth slowly formed into an 'o' of horror and understanding. "Highly flammable oil." He ran his hands over his sleeves and said, slowly nodding, "she rubs the oil on her arms, paints her nails."

"Then turns on the burner and sticks her hands into the flames," Casey said, looking totally lost. "Why? How could she possibly mistake the two?"

That was the question that nobody had an answer to.

* * *

"You think Otis is right?" Casey asked Severide as they left the firehouse during the shift change the next morning.

"About what?" Severide asked.

" _Something_ very weird is going on around here, even you have to admit that," Matt said.

"Yeah but aliens taking over and replacing people? Come on, Casey."

"Well, you got any better ideas?" Casey asked.

Kelly thought about it for a minute before answering, "No."

Casey got out a small laugh as they walked to the curb, he just about reached the driver side door of his truck when they heard the sudden noise of tires squealing from somewhere nearby. They looked and saw a truck make an illegal turn through an intersection and barreling right towards them. Casey jumped out of the way just before the driver smashed into the side of his truck.

"What the hell!?"

"Casey, you alright?" Severide asked as he ran over to him.

Casey felt a hot sensation of pins and needles in his back but nodded, "Yeah, I'm fine."

Severide marched over to the other truck to find out what was going on, he jerked the door open and the driver just about fell out. It was a guy in his mid to late 20s who for all intents and purposes appeared to be higher than a kite and didn't seem to even know where he was.

"Just what I needed," Casey grumbled.

Severide put the driver in a headlock and told Casey, "You call a tow truck, I'll call the cops, since we're both going the same way I'll give you a lift."

"Appreciate it," Casey replied as he took out his phone.

An hour later after the police had come and gone and taken the driver into custody and everybody else from 51 had gone home once all the commotion died down and everybody knew Casey was alright, it was just the two lieutenants left. Casey got in the passenger side of Severide's Mustang, and as they pulled away from the curb, Casey said to the Squad lieutenant, "You still sure the pod people aren't taking over?"

"Bad luck, that's all that was," Kelly said with a dismissive shake of his head.

"I wonder," Casey said as he looked out the window as they drove off.


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Casey was in bed when he heard Severide stomping around the hall, then he heard his door slowly creaking open. The light from the hall shone in and cast a shadow as Severide stepped in and asked, "You asleep?"

"No," Casey sat up.

"Been asleep?"

"No."

He could see the shadow nodding.

"You wanna watch TV?"

Not the weirdest thing he'd ever been asked at 2 o' clock in the morning, but somewhere up there. Still, all the strange events from the previous day hadn't left Casey too eager to be on his own, though he couldn't explain it.

"Sure," he said as he got up.

The two of them headed down to the living room, parked themselves on the couch and flipped through the channels. Halloween might've been over but some of the networks were still running all night long horror movie marathons.

"Hear anything out of Antonio today?" Kelly asked.

"Mm-hmm," Casey tiredly grunted. "He doesn't think Charlene Peterson is connected to the graveyard fires or his 3 dead dealers, but he thinks there might be a connection between her and that guy that slashed his face open."

"What?"

"I don't know, he's not saying," Casey answered. "He said there were three similar calls today with 3rd Watch. Ambo 61 responded to a woman who drank bleach, she had it poured in a coffee cup and some of it was still in it, then there was a guy who said he'd been taking a bath...he'd filled the tub with turpentine."

"Oof!"

"And then...there was a woman who cut her face open with an old straight razor...she said that she was putting on lipstick."

"I don't get it," Severide said, "what is going on with these people?"

"I don't know," Casey shook his head, "but it's getting harder not to worry."

"About what?" Kelly asked.

"Yesterday Brett said none of the people they took to the hospital were any repeat customers...so until now these people have somehow gotten through life _without_ maiming or mutilating themselves...then one day they just seem to wake up and try to kill themselves in the most gruesome ways imaginable, why? How do they arrive at this conclusion? And they seem to have no memory of it, how could you do any of this stuff and not know it? Whatever's causing it...is there any way to determine who they are, or who'll be next? Is there an actual connection or is it all random? And if it is..."

Casey didn't finish that thought but Severide seemed to pick up on what he was hinting at anyway. "Don't worry about it, whatever it is, Antonio and the others will figure it out. There's got to be _some_ logical explanation for everything."

"Like what?" Casey asked.

"I don't know...maybe somebody's putting bath salts in the street drugs."

Even though Casey didn't put much faith in that suggestion, it did remind him of something Antonio had said the other day, something he might have to look into.

* * *

Casey slowly became aware of several things, one, he was sitting on the couch, and sore as hell from apparently sleeping there all night, secondly, somebody was with him, because three, he could feel an arm draped over his shoulder, and the side of somebody's head pressed against the side of his own. Before he actually got his eyes opened he tried to remember what had happened last night, but then he realized he didn't even know what day it was. He opened his eyes and turned to see who was with him, and saw it was Severide, who was also just waking up, neither of whom responded well to the fact each was a fraction of an inch from the other's face, and both of them let out a startled yell and moved away from one another as quickly as they could.

"What happened?" Severide asked in an equally startled tone.

Casey grunted as he tried to form an answer. He looked at his watch and saw it was 6 A.M. "It's morning," he said.

"What?" Severide blinked and rubbed his eyes and realized, "We fell asleep watching TV."

The two men yawned and stretched and heard several things pop, then got up from the couch.

"So what's on the agenda for today?" Kelly asked.

"I've got something I need to do later," Casey said, and he hoped Severide didn't ask him what, because he didn't want to have to explain where he was going.

* * *

Casey walked through the sliding doors at Chicago Med and spotted Maggie by the front desk.

"Maggie."

"Hi, Matt, what're you doing here?"

"Hoping you can help me. There was a teenage girl brought in yesterday, she was hypothermic and had..." he reached behind his shoulder, "these large cuts on her back."

"Oh yeah," Maggie nodded, "Lena Bryant."

"Was she discharged?"

"No, she's still here. The doctors wanted to err on the side of caution and Dr. Charles was able to talk her parents into keeping her here so they could run some more tests."

"How's she doing?"

"Physically she seems to be alright."

"Can I see her?"

"Sure."

Matt got the room number and went to see the girl who for whatever reason, all of this seemed to have started with.

As he approached the hospital room, he poked his head in and saw the teen girl sitting up in the bed looking at something. He wasn't sure what, the TV wasn't on, but she was staring at something in that general direction. There hadn't been much to actually 'clean up' when she was brought in, but she looked a lot better now than when they saw her the other day. Her hair had been combed and her color had improved a lot. Almost like a totally different person.

He cleared his throat and saw her turn towards him.

"Lena, my name's Matt Casey, I'm one of the firefighters from 51, do you mind if I talk to you?"

She didn't answer, she turned her head back and continued staring at the wall. Casey decided her not objecting was as good as an invitation so he showed himself in and walked over to the bed.

"Lena, do you remember walking to our firehouse yesterday morning?" he watched her face for any signs of recognition.

If she did or not he couldn't be sure, she just sharply turned her head to look in the other direction.

"Can you tell me what happened to you?"

Still nothing.

"Do you remember Halloween night?" Nothing. He pressed further, "We found your jacket in the cemetery. Do you know what you were doing there? Was there anyone else with you?"

He turned to meet her eyes and she turned her head back and looked the other way.

"There was a fire in the cemetery. Do you know anything about it?" Nothing. "There was another fire in another cemetery the same day, only there were about a dozen teenagers there, all of them dead. Do you know anything about _that_?"

Her eyes focused on the wall again.

"Who attacked you, Lena?"

Casey heard footsteps behind him and he turned and saw Dr. Charles entering the room.

"Oh, Lieutenant Casey, I didn't know you and Miss Bryant were acquainted," he said. "Can I see you for a minute?"

Casey left the room and followed Dr. Charles down the hall out of earshot.

"I admire your efforts, Casey, but I'm afraid she won't open up to you, I've tried speaking to her five times, all with the same results."

"How's she doing?" Casey asked.

"Physically or mentally?"

"Both."

"Well, we've finished running all the tests that can and _have_ ruled out any biological cause for her muteness," Dr. Charles explained, "so that just leaves the psychological."

"Can you tell me _anything_?" Casey asked.

"This is not an official diagnosis, don't quote me," Daniel told him, "Something or someone _scared_ her into silence."

"Do you have any idea what?" Casey asked.

"Well first thing that comes to mind is whoever attacked her threatened her unless she kept quiet," Dr. Charles answered. "I can't say for certain either way but I'm not convinced that's it."

"What about something like watching 12 friends get murdered?" Casey asked.

"Oh yeah, I'd heard about that," the psychiatrist responded, "it's possible but unfortunately we won't be able to find out anything until she's willing to talk to us."

"How long can you keep her here?" Matt wanted to know.

"I managed to convince the higher ups that she has a legitimate medical need to stay here until further notice, the cuts on her back are in a place she cannot possibly treat them herself and since both parents work all day, there wouldn't be anyone at home to tend to them and make sure infection doesn't set in. So to avoid her becoming a repeat patient in the course of a week, we're keeping her here for the time being. I'm hoping before the scabs set in that something will break the ice and she'll tell us what happened."

"But you don't have _any_ ideas?"

"You tried talking to her," Dr. Charles said. "Maybe you noticed her eyes tend to roam about the room in between that blank stare like you're not even there."

"Yeah, I saw that."

"This isn't typical teenage rebellion tuning out the adults, I believe she does it so she can't give off any visual cues when making eye contact, we tend to pick up on people's faces what they won't put into words, and from what I've seen, she's not willing to reveal anything right now," Daniel told him.

"You think she'll come out of it?" Casey asked.

"Sooner or later, I'm not staking my career on it, but I don't think she has it in her to hold out long-term."

"If she does...will you call me? There're some things I need to ask her. I need to find out if all this stuff that's been happening lately is connected or not."

"Sure," Dr. Charles agreed.

* * *

"Two more," Otis grimly told Severide and Casey when they showed up for the next shift. He'd been standing at the edge of the apparatus floor waiting for them.

"Two more what?" Severide asked.

"Two more ambo calls yesterday," Otis answered, and looked from one lieutenant to the other, "woman who said she was soaking her feet in Epsom salts, put a dozen razor blades in the foot tub. Then another woman who drank half a bottle of dish detergent."

"Good God," Casey said in a sickened tone.

"Does anybody have _any_ idea what the hell's going on?" Severide asked.

Brian just shook his head.

"Still think it's aliens, Otis?" Casey asked.

"Right now that would actually be a comforting thought, lieutenant," Brian responded, "because the alternative is everybody's just going nutso trying to kill themselves for no reason."

The two lieutenants turned and looked at each other and considered what that could mean.

"Should be an interesting shift," Severide murmured.

* * *

Everybody sat around the common room and nobody said anything. It was past noon but nobody was hungry, nobody could _possibly_ eat. They'd just returned from a house fire where a 2 story home had just about been completely engulfed in flames, before the place started falling apart they'd gone in on an rescue attempt, only to find everybody in the house was dead. The thing that nobody could figure out was how the five bodies of the family living there, didn't seem to be anywhere near the fire before it spread to the whole second floor, but they were all laid out on the floor of the master bedroom in a semi-circle, burnt to charred, gnarled remains. All of them, the natural order of the fire mangling their bodies into varied positions aside, for the most part just seemed to have laid straight down on the floor and allowed themselves to be burnt to a crisp.

Upon returning to 51, everybody split up in little groups; Mouch and Herrmann sat on the couch by the TV, but didn't have it on, Cruz and Otis sat at one table with a chess game set up but neither of them actually played, they just tapped their pawns on the board, the guys from Squad sat at another table in silence, Casey sat by himself away from the others.

Boden entered the room, looked around at his men and told them, "I just got off the phone with Med. I know we had Chaplain Orlovsky in on last shift to help counsel anyone that might need it, but after this last call, I'm expanding that department, and Dr. Daniel Charles of Med's psychiatric wing has offered to come over and provide his services to anyone who needs them...it is _not_ optional, whatever is going through your heads, get it out in the open when he comes."

There was a low, somber round of murmurs of agreement from the others.

After Boden returned to his office, the others started to slowly come around and talk again.

"So uh..." Otis cleared his throat, "This is probably the last thing anyone wants to talk about...are we decided yet if the mutilation calls we've been responding to lately, are connected to or separate from the fires?"

"Why?" Casey asked.

"Well, I've been going over the calls from the last few days, and it reminds me of a movie I saw called 'The Hypnotic Eye'."

"Ah geez, here we go again," Herrmann murmured.

"Just hear me out," Brian said, "it was an old horror movie from the 60s about beautiful women who maim themselves in the most horrible ways imaginable, with no apparent motive, or even any recollection of what they did."

"So what?" Cruz asked.

"Well so, the movie opens up with a woman washing her hair, then sticking her head over a lit burner and catching on fire, sound familiar?" Otis asked.

That got everyone's attention and they all started looking around the room at each other as they considered this.

Brian continued, "Others included a woman who stuck her face in the blades of a fan, a woman who cut her face open with a straight razor, another who drank lye and thought it was coffee, another washed her face with sulfuric acid."

Mouch cleared his throat and asked, "So why _did_ they do it?"

"They were all hypnotized by a guy that had a light-up eye he hid in the palm of his hand," Otis said.

"Yeah? Well I doubt that's the case here," Herrmann said, then added under his breath, "still, is a strange parallel."

"So what _do_ you think is behind all of them?" Otis asked.

"I don't know," Casey said, "but I'm starting to worry about going to sleep at night." He looked around at the others and elaborated, "if things keep up like this, within a month the whole city's gonna burn to the ground."


	4. Chapter 4

"Matt? Matt?"

Casey blinked and realized Dr. Charles was talking to him.

"Sorry," he said, "what was it?"

"I said how did you feel when you found the bodies in the bedroom?"

It had been a slow shift, so Dr. Charles had been able to psychoanalyze everybody one by one, now it was Casey's turn. He didn't know how long they'd been talking, he just wanted it over.

"How do you think?" Casey replied.

"Well, not being able to save everyone is unfortunately a part of the job, you know that better than I do," Daniel said, "but it's not usually like this, is it?"

"It's _never_ like this," Casey answered. He shifted gears and asked, "Has that girl said anything yet?"

"Right now we're focusing on you," Daniel said.

"Has she said anything?"

"No," Dr. Charles shook his head.

"Let me ask you something," Casey said.

"Okay, sure."

"What would possess somebody to douse themselves in oil, set themselves on fire, and then deny they did it?"

Daniel took his glasses off. "This is about that woman they brought in 3 days ago?"

Casey nodded. "What about drinking a bottle of dish detergent? What about cutting your face open with a razor?"

"Well, as far as suicide attempts go, there are more effective and overall less gruesome ways to go about it," Dr. Charles said, "however there are some people that get it in their head that the more outlandish something is, the more graphic it is, the better it is because people will remember them...not entirely different from copycat shooters, they see all this attention the media pays to the original gunman, and the way their mind works, this is their chance for 15 minutes of fame, and if they can make it somehow more memorable than the previous shooting, they interpret that as a good thing for them, it's their key to notoriety."

"You really think all these people just wanted to kill themselves and wanted it to be as horrible as possible for posterity?" Casey asked.

"I didn't say that," Dr. Charles told him, "as far as I know, all the victims are still alive, now it's my experience that there are 3 reasons for botched suicide attempts: one, they weren't serious attempts to begin with, two, somebody discovered them prematurely and called for help, three, once they actually start experiencing the pain, they change their mind and their immediate focus is ending the pain, their own plans immediately halted."

"None of these people seem to have any memory of what they did to themselves," Casey said. "You really think they're all attempted suicides they regretted?"

"That would be a very big coincidence," Dr. Charles commented.

"Otis thinks it's some kind of mass hypnotism."

"Well, that would be slightly less unnerving than the idea all these people just randomly decided to maim themselves in some of the most frightening ways possible," Dr. Charles said. "When people try to rationalize something that can't be explained, the idea of it being an evil conspiracy tends to somehow be more comforting than the idea of spontaneous individual actions."

"But what do you think?" Casey asked.

"I wouldn't be able to form any real opinion on that until I could actually speak to them, unfortunately right now most of them aren't _able_ to," the psychiatrist told him.

"If we don't know what's causing it, we have no way of stopping it from happening again, which means any time those bells go off...we'll be walking into it all over again."

"I wish I had a better answer for you," Dr. Charles said somberly. "Unfortunately right now it's still wait and see."

* * *

They didn't have to wait for long. Shortly after Dr. Charles had left 51 to return to Med, the bells went off again and a call came through about a house fire. When they arrived they saw flames shooting out of the upstairs windows, a neighbor in the yard told them that the family was still inside. They went in and found three children between the ages of 8 and 15 passed out in various parts of the house from smoke inhalation, but the mother was dead on the bathroom floor, reeking of lighter fluid and with a plastic bag tied over her head. She had an old button-up shirt on over her clothes and disposable gloves on her hands, which told Casey that this woman had been under the fatal delusion she was dyeing her hair.

The fire on the second floor hadn't spread to the rest of the house and after a while they were able to get it put out. There was extensive damage upstairs but the house wasn't totaled, sometime after everything stopped smoldering, the arson squad could be brought in and see if it could be determined what started the fire, but for now everybody was figuring it was unconnected to the dead woman on the first floor, and a mere coincidence the two events happening at the same time. Police were trying to contact the father and any other immediate family, and uniform officers were heading towards Med to speak with the children when they regained consciousness to see if they knew anything about the fire or about what happened to their mom.

"I hate to admit it, but Otis's hypnotism idea is starting to sound more and more credible," Casey told Severide once they returned to 51.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, people suffocate themselves with plastic bags all the time, sometimes even deliberately, but _why_ would anybody who's going to do that wash their hair with lighter fluid first? These people must genuinely believe they're doing something normal, the question is why don't they realize right away what they've done? You'd be choking on the fumes, and there's no way you could mistake that for hair dye."

Kelly had to admit the whole thing didn't make any sense, but none of them had any idea what the answer was, or even if there was one.

* * *

The sight of Antonio Dawson entering 51 was a welcomed one because everybody hoped it meant they'd find out what was behind everything that had been going on. But the Intelligence detective wasn't so optimistic.

"We don't have any answers yet," was the first thing he told the firefighters, "but we may be getting closer. Of everybody that's been taken to Med the last few days, it's been confirmed none of them have any documented history of depression or mental illness or any previous suicide attempts."

"Well that doesn't help much," Otis said.

Antonio continued, "Lena Bryant, the girl that came here, her tox screen came back positive for trace amounts of heroin and sleeping pills, and by trace I mean if she _did_ have a full dose originally, it's impossible it was on Halloween, so either she took the drugs earlier in the week, or somebody tried to slip her something and she only got a partial dose. Heroin already slows the body's functions after the initial high, mental function is slowed down, drowsiness sets in, they feel like time stands still, they're in a fog, heart rate and breathing slow down making coma or brain damage likely outcomes, couple that with sleeping pills, it sounds like somebody didn't want this kid getting up and walking away."

"And we can all guess what for," Otis said.

"Yeah well, about that other thing, we might be getting closer on that too," Antonio said, "once the crew from the M.E.'s office came out to collect the bodies at the cemetery, they found a homemade Freddy Krueger glove under one of the boys."

"So she _was_ with them," Cruz said.

"At some point during the night, it seems so, how she got away from the others to the first cemetery then, and what happened in between the two points, is still anybody's guess," Antonio said. "The dead kids who weren't completely burnt up by the fire all had tox screens done to see if they all took the same drugs. A few tested positive for heroin but _all_ of them had high levels of sleeping pills in their system."

Kelly shook his head trying to take it all in. "They all OD'd in the cemetery and somebody set them on fire afterwards?"

"No," Antonio said, "none of them overdosed, what killed them was exposure."

"What?" Otis asked.

"Apparently they all had enough sedatives in their system that they just passed out, then being out in the elements all night was enough to finish them off."

"Sounds like some kind of suicide pact," Casey said.

"Or human sacrifice," Herrmann added.

"It's definitely symbolic, the graveyard, laying them all out, the fire, the problem is we don't have any idea what it means," Antonio said, "so right now the families and friends of every kid that could be ID'd is being questioned to figure out if there's a pattern that connects the victims. And now we're on the next piece of the puzzle, the victims at Med. Tox screens were done on them too and all of them came back positive for heroin _and_ anti-depressants, _three_ different kinds of anti-depressants. None of these people have any prescriptions for anti-depressants, none of them have any police record for drugs, so we don't know where they got it, what we _do_ know is anti-depressants already carry a side effect of depression and suicidal thoughts, you put somebody on three different kinds, it becomes a surer bet."

"Wait, wait, wait," Herrmann said, "so, double that with the heroin, these people might actually be trying to kill themselves?"

"It's a working theory anyway," Antonio said, "with the heroin slowing down the thinking process and blocking the pain sensors, that could explain why they are not reacting until most of the damage is already done."

"If even then," Casey replied, remembering the last call they answered.

"So now what?" Kelly asked.

Antonio shook his head, "I wish I knew...the only people we can actively look for anymore occurrences from are the people with drug charges on their sheets, but since none of the victims so far qualified...we're flying blind into this, we have no way of knowing who'll be next, or when."

* * *

The next night off shift, Casey tossed and turned in his bed and fluffed the pillow, then punched it down, but he still lay there for over half an hour wide awake and knowing he wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. The room was dark, the house was quiet, but he couldn't sleep, and finally he gave up trying. He pushed the covers back, got up, and making his way in the dark, padded over to the door, opened it and headed out into the hall, and promptly bumped into someone else. The surprise drew a shocked gasp out of both him and the other person, feeling around in the dark, he found the light switch and flipped it.

"Oh it's you," he said as he saw Kelly, who also looked like he'd just stumbled out of bed.

"You can't sleep either?" he asked.

Casey shook his head. "Guess it's gonna be another long night."

Severide nodded and the two of them headed down the stairs and parked themselves on the couch again and passed the next couple hours watching whatever was on TV, not talking about what was going on, trying not to think about what was going on but not able to think of anything else.

When Casey started to wake up the next morning, he could feel somebody's head pressed against his, and instinctively he knew it was Severide, this time he didn't mind it. In truth, he was grateful for the presence of another person, knowing he wasn't alone made everything going on outside his home seem a little less threatening. He opened his eyes and saw Severide had leaned over towards him in his sleep, and he also was just starting to come around.

"You know if this keeps up, I'm going to start taking it personally," Casey said cynically, not wanting to let on to what was really going through his mind.

"Well it wouldn't if you'd learn how to pick up someone at a bar," Severide responded. He looked over and saw Casey looked a little pale and distant, "You okay?"

"Just wondering how many more there were yesterday, last night," Casey told him. "How many of them didn't make it to the hospital in time?"

Kelly looked at him with concern. "If you need to take next shift off, I'm sure Herrmann would be happy to fill in."

Casey shook his head. "That's not it, we have some idea _how_ this is happening but we still don't know _why_ or what the connection is between everyone."

"Or even if it is," Severide said.

"Antonio said none of the victims had any priors for drugs, so where're they all getting this stuff all of a sudden?"

Kelly looked at him, "You going back to talk to that girl again?"

"Think it'd do any good?"

"No, but I know that won't stop you," Severide answered. After a pause, he added, "If you want me to go with you..."

Casey thought about it for a minute and finally nodded, "Who knows? Maybe the sight of you will scare her into cooperating."

Severide reached over and playfully elbowed Casey in the ribs.

* * *

"Wow," Kelly said as they left Lena Bryant's hospital room, "Did the _mob_ get to this kid or something?"

"I'm starting to wonder," Casey said. "You'd think we were after military secrets instead of trying to find out what her connection is to the dead kids, and you _know_ that's not just a kid not wanting to get busted for doing drugs."

"Somebody or something definitely got to her. Is Antonio keeping tabs on her?"

"I hope so, she's being discharged later today," Casey said.

"Think anybody else is up for talking?" Kelly asked.

"Like who?" Casey cynically asked, "the woman who burnt up her esophagus drinking bleach or the guy who flayed open his whole face with a knife?"

"Point taken," Severide responded, "still, there's got to be somebody somewhere we can talk to, there has to be someone that knows _something_."

Casey stopped and Kelly almost walked into him.

"Did Antonio say anything about stomach contents?"

"No, why?"

"You know all those stories about psychos that put drugs in Halloween candy," Casey said, "all this started on Halloween night...maybe there's a connection, it would explain how they got the stuff if they weren't previous users."

Kelly shrugged his shoulders, "I guess it's worth looking into."

* * *

"Sorry, Casey," Antonio shook his head, "It's a nice theory but the problem is we already checked on it. Only half of the teenagers had any candy in their system, none of the adults did so we ruled out that possibility."

"So what else could it be?" Kelly asked.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Antonio replied. "Narcotics is looking into each case to see if they can establish a pattern with any other drug-related crimes in the city, so far coming up empty."

"However it's being done, we're in agreement that somebody is deliberately drugging these people, right?" Casey asked.

"If not, this is the weirdest ass coincidence I've ever seen," Antonio said.

"So what kind of person would actually _want_ to do this to another person?" Casey asked.

"Either somebody who actually knows all these people and it's personal," Dawson answered, "Or some nutjob targeting random people, like the Tylenol murders."

"But still the question _how_ are they getting the drugs?" Severide asked.

"And no immediate answer in sight," Antonio remarked.

"So we just wait for more bodies to drop," Casey said.

"Unfortunately we don't have a lot of options, until we can establish a common factor, we can't warn the public what to look out for," Antonio pointed out.

"Antonio, this is ridiculous."

"Tell me something I don't know, I'm sorry, Casey, right now I don't know much more than you, and short of a heavy miracle I don't see us getting much further anytime soon."

* * *

Casey heard the faint beeping of a pass alarm, it sounded like it was a million miles away. Everything was dark, he didn't know where he was, he almost felt like he was in a dream. After a while the alarm stopped, and everything was quiet. He breathed, the air felt heavy, and he felt himself drifting away.

 _"Casey, can you hear me?"_

He knew that voice. It took a while to place it, it was Severide, he sounded strange. Somewhere in the back of Casey's mind he realized it was because he had his mask on. But where _was_ Severide? He felt something shaking him, and his eyes opened. He realized he was on the floor of a burning house, and Kelly was standing over him trying to pull him out of the room.

"Severide?" he weakly asked.

"You okay, buddy?" Severide looked both relieved and worried to see him.

Casey raised a hand to touch his head, then realized he also still had his mask on. He looked around and tried to remember what he'd been doing, but it wasn't coming to him.

"Severide?" he asked, hoping that something would jog his memory.

Severide reached for his radio, and told somebody, "I got him! We're coming out!"

"What happened?" Casey asked as Kelly pulled him to his feet.

"Just follow me, don't look back!" Severide told him.

That was the first time he'd ever heard that one, and it didn't help him remember anything whatsoever. But he nodded and followed Severide out of the room that was filling with black smoke. If they were coming out, then whatever had to be done must've been done...but if Severide was here, _where_ were the people Rescue Squad had pulled out?

As they reached the door, Casey turned back for a look, and now he knew why Severide had said not to. He couldn't make out how many charred bodies were in the middle of the room, at least five, possibly more, all of them beyond any identification.

"Casey!" Severide grabbed him and pushed him out the door.

Above they heard the rafters groaning and they knew they didn't have much time, they ran across the hall and one by one jumped out of the window and onto the aerial. Once they got on the ground, and got their masks off, Severide was hollering over to the paramedics, "He lost consciousness! Check him out!"

Casey turned to him and sniped, "I'm _fine_ , Kelly." Even though he really didn't have any memory of passing out, but he knew Severide wouldn't lie about it.

Kelly shook his head, "Not taking any chances, come on, they'll get you looked at."

Casey argued with him all the way to the ambulance, but he finally agreed to let the paramedics check him over, truth be told he was feeling a little lightheaded. He tried to focus on what the paramedics were asking him to do, but he saw Kelly go over to Boden and the two of them were talking, he couldn't hear what they were saying, but every so often one of them would look over in his direction, and he knew they were talking about him.

Severide's comment from the other day came back to him.

 _"If you need to take next shift off, I'm sure Herrmann would be happy to fill in."_

Then in the house.

 _"Just follow me, don't look back!"_

So _that's_ what it was, they didn't think he could do his job, they thought he was letting the most recent cases get to him and interfere with his ability to do his work.

He hopped off the back of the ambulance and told the EMTs, "Thanks but I'm fine," and went over to the others.

"How're you feeling, Casey?" Boden asked.

"Fine, Chief," he said, trying his damnedest to actually sound nonchalant about it.

Boden turned back towards the burning house and said, "Medical examiner won't be able to collect the bodies until the secondary search, nobody's going back in there."

Casey looked at the house that was slowly falling to pieces as it continued to burn. He thought about the family lying dead in there, and his first reaction was to kick himself for not being able to get to them faster. But in reality, he knew it wouldn't have made any difference. Their bodies had already been charred by the time he reached the bedroom, that had been when he passed out. It just now dawned on him that that's what happened, that's why he'd been on the floor when Severide came in. The alarm that had been screaming...it'd been his alarm. Once again everybody had been laid out in a circle like somebody had positioned them, there was no way to tell how the fire started, and probably even the arson squad wouldn't be able to figure it out. He didn't remember anything past finding the bodies...the last thing he was ever going to do was admit Severide was right...but if this was suddenly going to be the new norm of the calls they answered, he honestly didn't know if he could deal with it.

* * *

The next night off shift, Severide lay in his bed in the guest room at Casey's, trying to sleep but not getting anywhere with it. He alternated between looking at the red glowing digits on the clock, and staring up at the ceiling. Sure, he could go see if Casey was up, and if he was then the two of them could go downstairs and watch TV until they fell asleep again, but he was hoping he could just fall asleep tonight. He'd already been trying for over half an hour, but he figured sooner or later something had to give. Besides, Casey had been distant since the house fire they'd responded to yesterday, Severide wasn't sure he'd enjoy the company.

They'd had Casey's equipment checked out, nothing wrong with his mask, nothing wrong with the air cylinder, nobody could figure out then what had caused him to pass out during the fire. Kelly had his own suspicions but he wasn't too keen on telling the others. The calls they'd been responding to lately had everybody on edge, but nobody it seemed, more than Casey. Stumbling upon yet another family carnage, it had simply been too much for him, and his brain had responded to the horror of it all by shutting down and causing him to faint. If only Casey wouldn't have turned around at the last minute, maybe he wouldn't have to remember what he saw. But Severide suspected that was too much to hope for, sooner or later the memory of it would've come flooding back and hit Casey like a train.

They'd all talked to Chaplain Orlovsky, and they'd all talked to Dr. Charles, none of which seemed to actually do much good, and as long as similar calls kept coming in, Severide figured it wouldn't be too long before the department ran out of people for them to talk to.

Kelly had just closed his eyes and started to feel himself falling asleep when he heard somebody screaming. He felt his blood run cold and he shot up in bed as he listened, and realized that it was Casey screaming. Kelly threw back the covers, ran out of his room, and started running down the hall to Casey's room when he realized the screams were coming from the other end of the hall. He turned and saw the bathroom light shining through the crack under the door. He ran back the way he came and flung the door open and was met by a thick curtain of steam. He choked as he made his way over to the shower where it was all emanating from, and grabbed the shower curtain and threw it back, then the only sound Severide was aware of was his own screaming.

* * *

Present-

Severide felt like he had to keep moving or he'd lose his mind. He paced around the waiting room while Otis and Cruz sat in a couple of chairs, trying to make some sense of what had happened that night. Kelly had called the others as soon as the doctors took Matt away, but so far nobody else had shown up. He paced around a couple more times, and saw Antonio heading their way.

"I came as soon as I heard, man, how is he?"

Severide just shook his head. Right now words were beyond his capability.

"What happened?" Antonio asked.

He shook his head again, and this time tried to talk, he was surprised at himself to hear the words actually come out.

"I don't know...he...scalded himself, in the shower."

"Did he say anything earlier tonight?" Antonio asked, "Anything that might've tipped you off something wasn't right?"

Kelly started to shake his head, then stopped and looked at Antonio with an almost blank look in his eyes. Then he asked, "Are you saying he did this on purpose?"

"No, I'm not saying that, but we both know how upset he was over what was happening," Antonio said.

That felt even more like a slap in the face, "You're saying Casey lost his mind and went insane?"

"I'm just asking if..."

Severide got in the cop's face and started screaming at him, "Are you saying Casey was _trying_ to kill himself?"

Hank Voight came up to them, his hands in his pockets, his usual unreadable expression on his face, and told Severide, "Nobody's accusing anyone of anything, but if we're going to get to the bottom of what happened, we have to ask these questions. Now first thing's first, how _is_ Matt?"

Kelly looked at the Intelligence sergeant with a completely lost look on his face, he shook his head cluelessly as he explained as best he could, "He scalded half of his body...his skin _fell off_!"

Voight tried to remain his typical stone faced self, but for a split second Severide could see the older cop squeeze his eyes shut, as if he was trying to push that mental image away from him.

"Kelly, did you ever see Casey work on the water heater at his house?" Antonio asked.

Severide looked at him strangely, "No, what's that got to do with anything?"

"It's just that the law mandates water heaters only go to 120 degrees so people _can't_ get scalded, now it's not foolproof, but have you ever seen the water heater?"

Kelly shook his head, "No, there was never any reason to."

"And you didn't hear anything?" Voight asked.

"No, I was still awake, I didn't hear anything until he started screaming," Severide answered.

"Somebody's gonna go to the house and check it out, just make sure nobody tampered with it," Voight said, "how long do you figure he had to be in the shower?"

"Uh..." Severide tried to push back the memory of finding Casey in the shower, his deafening screams, that horrible sight of his flesh blistered beyond recognition. "The doctors figured he had to be standing there at least a minute...now come on, you know as soon as you burn yourself you either turn the water down or get the hell out of the way, wa-wh-why would he just stand there and let his skin burn off?"

"That's what we're going to try and find out," Antonio responded.

Kelly felt like reality was slipping away from him. "He didn't do this to himself, he wasn't crazy and he wasn't suicidal."

"Right, but you _were_ worried about his state of mind with all the calls you'd been responding to, right?" Voight asked.

"How'd you know about that?"

"The walls have ears," Voight answered nonchalantly.

He didn't even know what that was supposed to mean, and he didn't really care.

"I told him if he needed to, to sit out the next shift...then we responded to a house fire, a family of 5 all burnt beyond recognition...we lost him on the radio, so I went in to find him...his alarm was ringing...he was on the floor, he'd passed out."

"Guessing that doesn't usually happen," Voight said.

"Not if you still have air, which he did," Kelly answered.

"Paramedics checked him out?"

"Yeah, he was fine."

"Then what happened?" Antonio asked.

"I...don't know," Kelly admitted.

"Do you know if the doctors were able to take blood?" Voight asked.

"Uh...yeah, I think so...I think..."

"Then we should be able to find out if he had the same drugs in his system the others did," Antonio said.

Even though that was the only logical conclusion, it didn't set well with Kelly. "He doesn't take drugs."

"I know," Voight responded, "it'd be a bit different if we were talking about you. Least of all of the prescription variety."

Kelly shot him a death glare, but let it pass and told them, "He hasn't been around any, it wouldn't have been possible for him to get any in his system."

"I know you want to believe that, Kelly..."

"I know it, we got off shift, we went home, he never left, that's _all_ ," Kelly insisted.

"Did you hear him leave his room and go into the bathroom?" Voight asked.

Severide stopped. "No."

"Did you hear the water start?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Then it's possible he was exposed and you didn't know it either," Voight pointed out.

Kelly looked at the two cops and felt like the whole world just quit making sense.


	5. Chapter 5

Will Halstead saw Wallace Boden enter through the automatic sliding doors, he was hoping the battalion chief would be able to help him.

"Chief Boden."

"Dr. Halstead," Wallace addressed him.

"I appreciate you coming," Will said, "I'm hoping you can talk some sense into him."

"What's he's done?" Boden asked.

"Visiting hours were over two hours ago, he refuses to leave, I don't _want_ to have security escort him out, I understand how hard this is for him, and I understand it's family, and I'm the last person to stick to protocol and everybody in this hospital knows it, but we do have these rules in place for patients in the burn unit for a reason. Casey needs to rest, and he needs to be exposed to as few people as possible right now to prevent infections."

"I understand," Boden said. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Chief."

Boden knew the way, he'd already been in to see Casey last night when they first got the news he'd been hospitalized. He returned to the room and saw Severide sitting in a chair next to the bed.

"Kelly."

Severide turned and looked at Boden but didn't respond otherwise. Boden looked past him and saw Matt laying in the bed, unconscious, hopefully unaware. Wallace had to rely on all his years of experience, to disassociate from that image of his lieutenant, with the oxygen tubes up his nose, and two bandage patches covering his eyes, and large parts of his body blistered and oozing and other parts with the blisters and the skin falling off all over again. It sounded cold, but if he didn't dissociate from it, and in this moment treat Casey just like he did every other burn victim they saw on the job, then he knew that _neither_ of them would leave the room. Instead he forced himself to focus on the Squad lieutenant.

"Kelly."

But Severide had returned his attention to the man laying on the air mattress to distribute his weight so as little pressure was put on his burns as possible.

"Kelly," Boden said again. "It's time to go."

Severide shook his head and continued to stare at his friend. "Sorry, Chief, I can't. I have to stay here with him."

"Kelly."

Severide shook his head again, "No, I can't leave."

"Kelly, don't _make_ me drag you out of here," Boden said.

"I have to stay with him, Chief," Kelly insisted. "If he wakes up and nobody's here, he's going to panic, I need to stay with him."

Boden shook his head. Severide acted like he might be bordering on shock, he didn't seem to fully grasp the concept of Casey being kept in a coma for the time being. Once he got Kelly out of Casey's room, they might have to swing by the front desk and get someone to look at _him_ too. The doctors had already explained Casey would be kept in a medical coma for at least a week, when he woke up he would still be in a world of pain, but they were going to keep him unconscious for the first part of it to save some physical strain on his body while he recovered. Wallace went over to the chair and moved to grab Kelly, who leaned back against the chair and shook his head and kept repeating "no, no, no" like a mantra. Wallace managed to get him under the armpits and jerk him to his feet, and Kelly struggled to break loose.

"Kelly," Boden said firmly, and almost instantly Severide stopped fighting with him. In a calmer tone Boden said assuredly, "Casey needs to rest...you'll come back and see him tomorrow."

Kelly stretched out a hand as if to try and touch Casey somewhere that he wasn't burnt, but in the end he couldn't do it. He hung his head low and sighed in defeat.

"He'll be alright," Boden told him, "just let him rest."

Wallace was well aware of how this situation was playing out. The way they spoke about Casey, almost as if he wasn't right next to them, wasn't much differently than if he was dying, and they knew it but were just trying to act like they didn't know it, those vain end-of-life promises to come back and visit soon, knowing there wouldn't be a next time. Knowing that, he could appreciate how hard this was for Severide, but they had to leave for the night. Boden had to force Severide to move his feet, and as soon as he took one step, a series of small sobs emitted from his throat and he tried to move back to Casey, Boden had to put his back into it and force Kelly towards the exit, by walking right behind him and pushing his weight against the lieutenant so he didn't have a choice.

Boden was sure this was earning them some strange looks from the other people in the hospital but he didn't care, he wound up having to force Severide along like that until they reached the waiting room. Then they saw an unusual sight, Voight and Antonio entering the hospital, Antonio looked exhausted.

"Oh good, you're here," he grumbled as they walked up to the two firefighters, "We've been trying to find you all night, we checked 51, Casey's home, Molly's, and half a dozen other bars in the district."

Nobody had to ask why they didn't just call Severide to find out where he was, he'd had his phone off the whole time he was in Casey's room.

"Find out anything?" Boden asked.

"Nothing definitive yet," Antonio said.

"We can't prove that that water heater was tampered with, but we _do_ know it reached a top heat of 140 degrees," Voight told them.

"Oh God," Kelly groaned.

"We canvased the neighborhood," Antonio said, "nobody saw anybody coming or going last night until the ambulance came to get Casey. So if he _was_ exposed to the same cocktail everybody else has been getting, nobody came in and gave it to him."

"The tox screen's not back yet?" Boden asked.

"We're waiting on it," Voight answered.

"I know I gave you guys the brushoff on Casey's poisoned candy theory, but just for the record, did he eat any yesterday?" Antonio asked.

Severide shook his head. "No, we usually run out at 51 before the night's over."

"Usually?"

"Few years back there were a couple bags left, if there were any this time, the guys from 1st Watch took it because nobody saw any," Kelly said. He looked at them and told them, "Casey knew this was going to happen."

"What?" Antonio blinked.

"He said something?" Voight asked.

"Not specifically, after the first cases he started questioning how they were connected, how the victims were picked, could it happen to just anybody...I could tell he was worried about somebody at 51 being next, but I just thought he was being paranoid. I didn't think it could actually happen."

Now Boden was starting to understand why Kelly had been dead set against leaving Casey.

"Come on, Kelly," he told the younger man, "I'll drive you home."

Severide pulled back from him, "I'm not going back there."

Boden looked at the two cops and tried to figure out what that meant. Then he realized Kelly hadn't _been_ home since they brought Casey in. Then he wondered where Severide had been staying before he came back to the hospital.

"Are you still watching that girl?" Kelly asked, "the one they discharged?"

"Yeah but she's still not talking," Antonio replied.

"There has to be _some_ way to make her, she knows something," Severide told him.

"Maybe there is," Voight offered.

Everybody looked at him, then at one another, wondering what his plan was.

Voight turned to Boden and said, "Chief, since this is one of your men, and this is a very delicate situation, I feel it'd only be appropriate to ask for your okay on this."

"What do you need?" Wallace asked.

"With your permission," Voight took out his phone, "I'm going to take some pictures."

"Of what?" Kelly asked.

* * *

Complying with the protocol about keeping Casey protected from any infections, Voight and Antonio had to don gloves and masks before they set foot in the room.

"Oh Dios mío," Antonio said as they entered the hospital room and saw Casey for the first time.

Voight didn't miss his detective crossing himself at the sight of the badly burnt lieutenant. If he were Catholic he'd have half a mind to do the same thing. It was hard to look at the man laying in the bed and remember this was the same guy who'd come to his home and knocked him on his ass several years ago. Firefighters thought about what happened if one of their own got burnt up in a fire, but _nobody_ would've guessed Matt Casey would be capable of doing this to himself. For everybody's sake, Voight was hoping the tox screen _would_ come back positive, at least then they could start making some sense out of all this. Then they'd move onto the next question of _how_ he got the drugs. He knew Severide was right, and it wasn't just because of the established pattern of none of the victims having a drug record, back when he was trying to find something to force Casey to retract his statement, he turned every item of the man's personal life inside out and couldn't come up with anything, especially nothing hinting towards a drug history, even living with a doctor there were nothing suggesting he used Hallie for easy access to any meds. Of course it hadn't stopped him from strapping 15 years' in prison worth of cocaine under Casey's kitchen counter. Aside from not being one of his finer moments, in hindsight it was unlikely it ever would've worked, any State's Attorney would wonder how a guy lives 32 years virgin pure and suddenly acquires a brick of snow, but Voight also knew any lesser person, no matter how honest they were, would've recanted just to spare themselves anymore trouble. No such luck with this guy, he was too tough to beat, which was why what was happening now made _no_ sense whatsoever.

He looked over and noticed Antonio staring at Casey in sheer horror. True they'd seen worse on the job, but never anything like this with one of their own and never anybody they worked with at 51.

"Get it together, Antonio," he told him, "we got a job to do."

He raised his phone to get a good angle and snapped a picture. Then he went over to the other side of the bed and took another.

"If these don't get that kid to talk, _nothing_ will," Voight told Dawson, who merely nodded in agreement.

* * *

Severide pounded on the door and waited for it to open. It was the middle of the morning and the block was pretty empty, which suited him, it was usually a good idea not to have a bunch of witnesses around.

He heard the door being unlocked on the other side, then saw the main door open, and saw the girl standing behind the glass door.

"Lena Bryant?"

"What do you want?" she asked.

"You remember me?" Severide asked.

She looked at him and after a few seconds responded, "You're one of the firemen."

"Can I come in?"

"What for?" she asked.

"It's important."

She thought about it, then reached over and unlatched the screen door.

"How're you doing?" he asked as he stepped in.

The girl took a step back and said simply, "You didn't come here to ask me that."

"Do you remember the other fireman that came to the hospital to speak with you?"

"What about him?" she asked as she turned and headed into the dining room.

Severide followed her. "You know what's been going on all over the city, you were there when it all started in the cemetery on Halloween. Why haven't you told the police what you know?"

"What makes you think I know anything?" she folded her arms.

"The brushoff you've been giving everyone," Severide answered. "Somebody threaten you?"

She rolled he eyes and said, "I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

The sound of the screen door slamming shut got both their attention. Voight and Antonio stepped in and entered the room.

"Who're you?" Lena asked.

"Police," Voight answered as he flashed his badge. "Now, you're going to tell us what you know, and who's behind all this, otherwise _you're_ going to be tried for murder."

"What're you talking about?" she asked, "What murder?"

Antonio took out his phone and brought up the graphic pictures they'd taken of Casey in the hospital, showing the full extent of the damage he'd suffered thus far. Her jaw dropped and she turned her head to look away, but it wasn't an option.

"Whoever's behind everything that's going on is also behind what happened to this man, _Lieutenant_ Matt Casey from Firehouse 51. If he dies from his injuries, that's going to be murder of a public servant, that's a death penalty charge," Voight told her as he shoved his phone in her face. "And since you've kept your mouth shut since day 1, we can only assume you know something about it, and if you don't tell us who's behind it, we're going to charge you as the sole perpetrator."

Now they had her attention.

"Fine," she said. "What do you want to know?"

"What happened at the cemetery?"

She shook her head, "I don't know. A bunch of us decided it'd be fun to go bum around a cemetery for Halloween, see if anything happened."

"You knew the other kids that went?"

"Knew _of_ them but we weren't really close, my friends never would've gone for it so I didn't bother telling them about it. We'd all been there for about half an hour when we saw somebody starting a fire in the middle of the place. At first we thought it was somebody just pranking us, I mean who does something like that? We went to check it out. I saw...this guy, toss a bag of something into the fire, the flames jumped, they got taller for a few seconds...then all this white smoke rose up from the fire. Everybody breathed some of it in, it was impossible not to, that stuff was everywhere, and after a while, the rest of them started to drop off...I figured they just wimped out and fell asleep, so I left. I don't know how I got to the other cemetery, it just seemed I was there. And that guy was there too...I don't know how he got there."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. He was wearing some kind of mask. He was chanting something, sounded like every old movie about cults or witches' covens, and I felt weird. Everything seemed to be in a fog. Then something hit me, and I _heard_ this awful _ripping_ noise, and then I felt something wet going down my back. And I heard him say something about...first he'd take the blood...then he'd invoke the fires of hell to take the souls. I tried to get out of there...seemed like I was walking forever. I don't even remember how I got back to town, the night seemed to last forever, pitch dark and freezing cold. Finally it was morning, and the last thing I remembered was reaching the firehouse."

"And afterwards?" Antonio asked.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Why didn't you tell anybody this in the first place?" Voight asked.

"I saw him again, when I was in the hospital," she said. "I looked out the window and he was standing across the street, it was like he was staring straight at me. I figured if I told anyone what happened, he'd know and he'd come and kill me."

" _Still_ wearing the mask?"

"I hope so, if not, he really must be something out of hell," the girl told them.

* * *

"If this guy had those drugs ground up in whatever was in the bag he tossed into the fire, that's how the kids at the cemetery got exposed, they breathed it in, which means he threw a ton of stuff into the fire for them to inhale that much," Antonio told Severide, "and if this guy is somehow able to insert himself into the other calls 51 responded to, anyplace there was a fire, that could've been the starting point, he tosses a bag into the fire, the drugs go up in the smoke, the smoke is breathed in by whoever's around, and they do whatever comes naturally to their drug infested brains."

"What about the ones where there wasn't a fire?" Kelly asked.

"I don't know yet," he shook his head, "but it gives us something to start with. The tox screen finally came back on Casey, positive for heroin and anti-depressants just like the others."

"Antonio."

"What?"

"Could he have been exposed during that house fire the day before he scalded himself?" Kelly asked.

"I thought you said he had his mask on at all times."

"As far as I know...but _something_ made him pass out. I thought it was just the shock of finding the family burnt to death, what if I was wrong?"

"Okay, say you're wrong, what happened then?" Antonio asked.

"I don't know...could that guy have still been in the house? Could he have knocked Casey out?"

"That's your territory, _could_ somebody still be in that house and not be found by the firemen, _and_ get away without anybody seeing him?" Dawson asked.

"I don't know," Severide said, "we didn't know the layout of the house, nobody could go back in for the bodies until the next day...Casey was in there for a while before I found him...maybe...it's possible this guy was there, when Casey's radio went out, they got in a fight, the guy somehow gets his mask off, he breathes in the drugs, he gets knocked out, the guy puts his mask back on, and hightails it out of there."

"That's a reach, Kelly," Antonio said.

"But is it impossible?"

"No, in theory I don't think it's impossible, but if he already killed the whole family, why would he stick around to attack _one_ of the firemen?" Antonio asked.

"I don't know," Severide admitted.

"Besides, you said the paramedics said he was fine," Antonio reminded him.

"Actually they said Casey left before they finished examining him, I took that as a good sign, but maybe they could've caught something," Kelly said.

"Maybe they could've," Antonio agreed, "but that doesn't mean this wouldn't have still happened. Kelly, you can't blame yourself for this for not paying closer attention."

"Antonio, I _knew_ he was worried, I wrote it off, I told him everything would work out and now he's in there with, with," Severide's chest started heaving and a choking sound rose from his throat.

"Take it easy," Antonio told him. "Casey's _going_ to be alright, Kelly, it's going to be a bitch of a wait but he's going to recover from this. In the meantime we're going to find the son of a bitch who's behind it."

"But why _would_ somebody do it?"

"Who knows? Maybe you were right after all."

"Me?" Severide asked.

"At the cemetery, maybe this _is_ a cult thing, a cult with only the leader and no followers, maybe this guy is some delusional paranoiac who thinks he's reincarnated from the ancient Druids, who knows? We won't know until we catch the guy."

"How long's that gonna take?" Kelly asked.

"Severide, don't worry, we're going to find this bastard," Antonio assured him.

"I hope you're right, I hate to think how much worse things could get from here."


	6. Chapter 6

The next shift without Casey was a haunting one to say the least. Herrmann was selected to fill in as acting lieutenant, not a job he took with any pleasure this time. Every minute that wasn't spent running drills or responding to fires or car crashes, the silence in the firehouse was overwhelming, but nobody seemed to know how to get away from it.

Kelly sat in his quarters writing up an incident report, and for the tenth time since he got there, he turned and looked over at Casey's empty office. That was like being kicked in the gut, knowing he should be there, and he wasn't, and knowing where he _was_ instead, and wishing to God he wasn't. He wondered how Casey was doing. He wished he was back at the hospital with him, he could at least keep an eye on him and _know_ how he was doing. It was hard enough being there and seeing it, but it was worse living every minute of the day dreading his phone ringing and somebody from the hospital saying they had bad news.

The sound of somebody knocking on his door about made him jump. He turned in his seat and saw it was Otis. This was a surprise, almost _nobody_ ever came to see him in his quarters, _everybody_ always went to see Casey if they had something to say.

"Can I come in?" Brian asked as he opened the door.

Severide recovered from the shock and waved him in, "Sure, come on in. What's up?"

"Heard anything out of the cops yet?" Otis asked.

"Not since they went to see that girl yesterday," Kelly answered as he turned towards his report again.

"Think they'll catch the guy?" Otis asked.

"I hope."

"Me too."

Kelly tried to concentrate but couldn't. He dropped his pen and turned his chair around and asked Otis, "Let me ask you a question. That movie you were talking about last week, the one where the women got hypnotized."

"Yeah, what about it?" Otis asked.

Even now it seemed too farfetched to have any connection, but Severide was hoping they could find an answer in it. "How did they stop the guy who was doing it?"

"Oh, well that's the thing, the hypnotist wasn't the one doing it," Otis told him.

"Huh?"

"He hypnotized the women when they came up on stage as part of his show, but afterwards, somebody _else_ came along and made them mutilate themselves."

"How?" Kelly asked.

"You know the theory that you can't hypnotize anybody to do anything against their will?"

"No," Severide shook his head.

"Yeah well, it's a very popular idea, you can't hypnotize somebody to kill themselves if they're not suicidal, you can't hypnotize somebody to commit a murder if they don't already plan to do it," Otis said.

"So what happened?"

"Well it was finally found out with the last victim, every single one of them thought they were doing what they normally did before going to bed, you know, have a cup of coffee, wash their hair, take a shower."

Kelly's eyes narrowed, " _What_?"

"That's what the last woman was told to do, take a shower and go to bed, only she was interrupted and the trance broke, she was the only one who didn't actually go through with it," Otis explained.

Severide slowly nodded, "And the movie was made 50 years ago _before_ there were laws about water heaters having a limit of 120 degrees temperatures, so scalding to death in the shower was a very real possibility."

"I guess so," Otis replied.

Kelly chewed on that one for a minute, repeated to himself under his breath, "Take a shower and go to bed," then he groaned and got out a louder, "Oh my God."

"You really think there's a connection?" Otis asked.

"I don't know, but you said yourself they're very similar," Severide said, "woman leans over a burning stove and sets herself on fire, two people cut their faces wide open, two of them drink household cleaners thinking it's coffee, it _does_ sound like there's a link."

"Yeah but that was just a movie, how could anybody pull that off in the real world?" Brian wanted to know.

"I don't know," Severide shook his head, "but I'm worried how much further this thing can actually go."

* * *

Kelly was aware of somebody talking to him. He knew it was the paramedics. He tried to look up at them but everything was blurry and some of it was doubled. He tried to answer their questions but his head was in a fog and nothing he said came out right, he wasn't sure what made it wrong but he just knew it wasn't what he was trying to say.

Everything had happened so quick he still wasn't sure what all actually had happened. They were on their way to a call, and suddenly there was a loud crash, the whole truck jerked, and they careened too far to the side and the truck had flipped over. Then it was black for a long time. Then he'd heard various noises, people yelling, glass breaking, saws cutting, but he wasn't hearing anything from his own crew, and that was the silence that scared the hell out of him.

As they were removed from the Squad truck one by one, he'd heard the paramedics talking. Tony had been impaled when the windshield shattered and had lost a lot of blood. Capp had been knocked unconscious when the truck turned over and EMTs suspected internal bleeding. Kelly didn't know what was wrong with him, all he knew was he couldn't turn his head, he couldn't see straight and he could barely talk. He was in and out of consciousness the whole way to the hospital. It wasn't his first time being the one strapped to a backboard instead of putting someone else on one, but the view of looking up at everything and everyone was always a disorienting one. He felt the gurney jerk under him as the wheels were put down and he was unloaded from the ambulance, he saw the other ambulances nearby and Capp and Tony were being brought out too. Severide tried to sit up and see them but the EMTs restrained him.

"Are they gonna be okay? _Are_ they gonna be okay?" he asked.

He saw Chout hovering over him.

"Just take it easy, Severide, everything's gonna be taken care of."

Kelly tried to look back, and at first he thought he was seeing double, but he realized there was an extra ambulance beside theirs.

"Hey hey hey!" he tried to sit up again, "What's that? Who's in that one?"

"Don't worry about it, Kelly," Chout told him.

"Wait!" Kelly wanted to see who was in it. He saw the EMTs open the doors, and the gurney was eased out...it was a body bag resting on it.

"Oh my God, who's that? Somebody died, who died?" Kelly demanded to know as he was wheeled up to the automatic doors of the hospital entrance.

"Kelly!"

He knew that voice, he couldn't see who it was but he knew it was Antonio. A few seconds later the Intelligence detective came into his view and stood over him.

"Antonio what's going on? Who died? What happened?" Severide demanded to know.

"Is he critical?" Antonio asked Chout.

"I don't think so."

"Stop here for a minute."

"Are you sure that's-"

"Do it."

"Okay."

As the gurney he was strapped to stopped, Kelly heard an onslaught of voices and saw the other members from Squad being rushed past him as the attending doctors looked them over. Capp had been bagged for oxygen, Tony's clothes were sated in his own blood, in a few seconds both of them were out of his sight.

"What happened?" Kelly wanted to know.

Antonio leaned down and told him, "A woman jumped off the bridge you guys drove under, apparently it was timed just right, she hit the edge of the truck's roof and the windshield at the same time. That's what caused the crash."

"Oh my God."

Something that Antonio said particularly stuck out in his mind.

 _"timed just right"_

"Not a suicide," he said.

"We don't know that yet," Antonio told him.

Kelly started laughing but there wasn't anything funny about it.

"Casey was only half right," he said.

"What's that?" Antonio leaned in closer to hear him.

"It wasn't all random," Kelly realized, "Somebody's actually trying to kill us."

"Kelly."

"Somebody's trying to kill all of us."

"Doc, I think he's going into shock," Antonio told Halstead as he came to the front.

Kelly felt rather than saw a light being flashed in his eyes, and he heard people talking, but it all became muffled and everything gradually went dark.

* * *

The next thing Kelly was aware of, he was laying in a hospital bed, and Will Halstead was facing him, talking, at first the words were jumbled and didn't make any sense, but gradually he realized Will was updating him on the others' conditions.

"Tony had transfusions to put back two liters of blood, he has 500 stitches, he'll be kept under observation for a couple days to make sure there are no complications. Capp has internal bleeding in the abdomen, we're keeping him under observation as well to see if the bleeding stops on its own or if he'll have to have surgery, right now it's a slow bleed and we're hopeful it won't advance from here. And _you_ have a concussion and will be kept under observation until we're satisfied you're not going to slip in a coma at a moment's notice."

"And Casey?" Severide croaked out.

"Still unconscious," Halstead answered.

"No change?"

"The skin is trying to repair itself, all it's doing is making new blisters, which break, which take off the new skin, so the nurses have to scrub it all off so infection doesn't set in, and the whole process starts again," Will told him, "It's going to be a vicious cycle for a long time."

The night they'd brought Casey in, Severide couldn't really see any good in putting him in a medical coma aside from making it easier on his body to recover, but he was grateful now that Casey _was_ , if he was conscious now and knew what had happened out there today, that _would_ be enough to push him over the edge.

"The woman?" he asked, though he already knew the answer to that one.

"DOA," Halstead said. "Somebody takes a header off a bridge and crashes through the windshield of a moving fire engine, I don't think anybody's going to beat those odds. Bringing her here was just protocol...and there is a very anxious Battalion Chief in the waiting room to see you."

Severide glanced to the window and saw it was pitch dark outside, how long had he been asleep?

"Send him in," he said, dreading to think how long Boden must've been waiting.

A few minutes later, Wallace entered the room. "Kelly, how're you feeling?"

"I think I got a headache," he replied. "How're the others?"

"They're doing fine," Boden said.

"How's Casey?"

"Lucky he doesn't have to feel what's going on right now," Boden answered.

Kelly grimaced at that mental image.

"Casey wouldn't say what he was really thinking because he was worried it sounded crazy," Severide told Boden, "but he was right, everything going on, it's not random, somebody's trying to kill us."

"Just take it easy, Kelly," Boden told him.

"That woman who landed on the truck...if she _did_ jump then somebody helped her, you can be sure of it."

"The cops are going to find out one way or the other," Boden assured him. "Kelly, you just need to take it easy and rest right now."

"Chief, what happens now?" Kelly asked, not able to bring himself to ask the obvious question, what was 51 going to do without a Rescue Squad?

Whatever the answer was, it wasn't readable on Boden's face. He looked Kelly in the eyes and told him, "Everything's going to work out, Severide, you just do what the doctors tell you and recover."

Now Kelly was starting to figure out why Casey had been so upset with him that last night. There were few feelings in the world worse than nobody answering your questions because they didn't think you could handle it.

* * *

After Boden had left, Kelly broke out of his hospital room and went to see Casey again. He managed to avoid running into anybody who would know he was supposed to be in bed, and got to Casey's room without anybody reporting him to the doctor or to security. He closed the door and headed over to Casey's bed, and stopped. Halstead hadn't been kidding when he talked about that 'vicious cycle'. Casey was still unconscious, and he looked worse now than he had the last time Severide had been in to see him. Severide swallowed hard, and made his way over to the bed, he watched Casey while he slept, and reached down and carefully stroked a hand over the back of his head, one of the few places it was actually safe to touch him.

"I'm sorry, Casey, I should've listened to you," he said quietly, trusting that his friend could hear him, "you knew this could happen, but you didn't want to say it because it sounded too weird to believe."

In the last few days everything had come together and started to make sense. Casey had told the others he was worried about going to sleep at night, but he'd changed the topic and said within a month the whole city could be burnt down. That wasn't what worried him, now Severide got it, since they had no way of knowing who could be the next victim, and all they knew was that it was people with no history of drugs or mental problems, Casey knew that qualified him, and everyone else at 51. What he'd been so worried about was going to bed normal one night, then waking up the next day and being like all the others, and not even realizing it, and that's what had actually happened. In the last several days he kept replaying the events of the night Casey was brought in...every other night off shift they couldn't sleep and they sat up watching TV. That night Severide had decided to leave Casey alone so they might both get some sleep. If he'd just gone to his room like he'd done every other night, then this wouldn't have happened, at the very least he could've stopped Casey, maybe even found out what was going on.

"I'm sorry I didn't take you seriously, Casey," Severide told him.

There was no response, he knew there wouldn't be.

Suddenly Kelly felt the presence of eyes on him, he turned around and saw the door was still shut. He went over to it and looked out in the corridor, he could hear all the typical sounds of the hospital, but he didn't see anyone around. He closed the door again and went back towards Casey's bed, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. Then he remembered what that teenage girl had said when he and the cops had gone to talk to her.

 _"I saw him again, when I was in the hospital. I looked out the window and he was standing across the street, it was like he was staring straight at me."_

Kelly looked over towards the window. It couldn't be. It was impossible. But...he walked over towards the window and pulled back the blind and looked down to the street. The lights from the hospital and the streetlights on both sides of the street kept everything pretty well illuminated, and there were several people down there, most of them were walking one way or another, but one stayed where he was, casually pacing around under one of the streetlamps. He stopped, reached into his coat pocket for something, put a cigarette in his mouth then cupped his hands around the end of it to light it. He pocketed his lighter, then looked up, and seemed to look straight at Kelly, and Kelly was able to look straight down at him and get a good look at him.

 _"Still wearing the mask?"_

 _"I hope so, if not, he really must be something out of hell," the girl told them._

Severide felt his eyes bulge and he turned away from the window and ran for the door. He ran out into the hall and almost collided into Maggie.

"Kelly, what're you doing here?" she asked.

"Maggie, call the cops!" Kelly told her.

* * *

"You saw him?" Antonio asked. He and Voight had taken it upon themselves to respond to the call about a disturbance at the hospital. They were gathered in Severide's room and Kelly leaned his weight back against the dresser as he told them what happened.

"He was right down there looking up at me," Kelly told them.

"But you were in Casey's room, right?" Voight asked.

"Yeah."

"So how would he know where you were?"

"All I know is he was there," Kelly told them.

"You're sure it was him?"

"It had to be, I _saw_ him."

"Well we went back and had Lena talk with a sketch artist," Antonio said, "can you describe what the guy looks like?"

There was no doubt in his mind. He would remember that face until the day he died.

"He looked..." Now Severide had a very good idea why Casey hadn't wanted to talk about what was really going through his mind. He knew how pertinent it was that the cops got all the details about the guy responsible for this, as fast as possible, but even he was reluctant to tell them what he'd actually seen, because he knew how ridiculous it sounded.

"He looked," Kelly tried again, "like...his whole face had been stitched together."

Antonio nodded slightly, took out his phone, and pulled up a picture and showed Kelly. The sketch composite showed a man with slanted eyes that sat far apart from one another, the hair on top of his head was black and stringy, and there were long scars running the full length of his face that bore resemblance to barbed wire. It looked like every part of his face had been stitched together, the forehead, the cheeks, the skin surrounding the eyes, the nose especially looked like several stitches had been used to put it in place.

"Like this?" Antonio asked.

Kelly stared at the picture and merely nodded.

"Do you have any idea who he is?" Severide asked.

"Not yet but we're working on it," Voight said. "In the meantime Casey's going to have a round the clock security detail posted outside his room until he leaves Med, nobody will be allowed in without clearance."

"That's it?" Kelly asked.

"Kelly, the good thing is with this description, there's no way that guy would be able to get in here without somebody noticing," Antonio told him.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Severide murmured in response.

* * *

Kelly made the rounds to see how his crew was doing, everybody seemed to be fairing alright, and he managed to avoid running into Maggie or anybody else that was authorized to send him back to his own room. After checking on his men he went towards Casey's room, but stayed around the corner and watched the security guard who was stationed outside the room. Severide stayed there for half an hour, he never saw anyone even come down the hall near the door. Maybe he was being ridiculous thinking the guy he saw out the window would actually come in here and try to kill Casey, but after seeing him with his own eyes, and being left with the distinct impression that he saw the devil himself, Kelly didn't feel he could leave anything to chance.

"What the hell are you doing out of bed?"

Severide turned and saw Dr. Halstead glaring at him.

"I'm fine, Will," Kelly insisted.

"We'll let the CT be the judge of that," Will replied, "In the meantime you're going back to your room before I have security escort you."

Severide pointed towards Casey's room, "Are you sure nobody can get in there?"

" _Nobody_ is getting into Matt's room, now get moving."

Kelly was led back to his room, and he had a good idea that it would be a while before nobody was watching for him to slip out. He went to the window, pulled the slats in the blind open to look out, and he didn't see anyone down in the street. He let the slats fall back into place and went over to his bed, but he didn't go to sleep. He alternated between watching the clock and staring at the ceiling all night, and finally fell asleep sometime around dawn.

When he woke up, there was someone in his room with him.

"Tony!" Kelly exclaimed as he shot up in the hospital bed, "What're you doing here?"

Tony's Squad uniform was long gone and had been replaced with one of the hospital's paper gowns, various parts of his face and body were bandaged and stitched, still he didn't look the worse for wear.

"I've been authorized to sit on you if you try leaving this room," he told the lieutenant, "So what's going on, Kelly?"

Severide groaned as he moved around in the bed, and he answered, "Somebody tried to kill us."

"Gee, tell me something I don't know," Tony remarked sarcastically.

"I'm serious, Tony," Kelly said, "everything that's been happening lately, it's all been arranged, all the accidents we responded to, what happened to Casey, the woman that jumped off the bridge, it's all been planned."

"Now _why_ would somebody do that?" Tony asked.

"I don't know," Severide admitted, "but I know it's true. I saw him."

"Who?"

"The guy who's responsible for all of it, he was standing outside the hospital last night, he was looking at me."

"How do you know he's it?" Tony asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I _know_ ," Severide told him. "Have you heard any update on Casey?"

"Still unconscious, past that I don't know."

"And you?"

"A little lightheaded, but I'm told that happens when you lose four pints of blood," Tony answered.

"And Capp?"

Tony made a face, "You're kidding, right?"

"Did they operate?"

"No, and probably just as well, I don't think there're enough drugs in this hospital to make him stop acting goofy," Tony said. "Last I saw him he was cutting eye holes in his newspaper."

Severide busted out laughing.

A/N: Only one more chapter to go!


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Here we are at the last chapter. I hope everyone enjoys it. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Kelly was having a dream where you knew you were in a dream but you couldn't wake up. In the dream he saw the same man who'd been watching him from the street. Somebody else saw the man and called the cops, he got away, but not before the CPD got on his tail, six police SUVs with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing chased him for miles at top speed, just narrowly avoiding all other traffic on the road as he attempted to lose them as he turned off of one street to another to another and cut across one way streets and over bridges. Additional police vehicles joined the manhunt every few miles until there were almost 20 squad cars chasing after him. At one point it was determined where he was heading, and several cops put out spike strips to flatten the getaway car's tires as he came by. A few minutes later the man came upon the scene at 100 mph, hit the spikes, lost control of the car and it flipped over and he was thrown through the windshield and lay crumpled in a heap on the ground as the police vehicles pulled to a screeching stop to assess the situation. The sirens were still blaring away and it seemed like they'd never stop.

Then Severide realized somebody was talking to him, he opened his eyes and saw Antonio standing over his bed.

"Kelly, we _got_ him."

"What?" Severide asked as he sat up.

"We got the bastard."

"Huh? Wha...how?"

"A traffic stop half an hour ago," Antonio told him. "We found a cigarette butt in a trashcan at the corner after you called us the other night, found out the DNA was in the system but there was no name to it. When we got the bastard, we ran his plates, the name on his driver's license, his name is Jack Malloy. No surprise, the picture on his license doesn't really match up with the real thing now. Turns out he was in a car accident some years back, and what you saw was the end result of a slew of plastic surgeries that were not successful, that just maybe knocked this guy's brain a little loose. Kelly...this guy is a real serial killer."

"What?"

"Now that we have a match on his DNA, it ties him to a cold case mass murder at a cemetery in New Jersey at Halloween five years ago, another dozen high school kids, and another in New York five years before that, somehow he always got out of Dodge before he could be suspected and laid low for a few years, then struck again at a new location. If he's some kind of satanic nutjob trying to rack up some body count record, I don't know, but back then he just out and out poisoned them with heroin cut with drain cleaner. Apparently he was working his way up to bigger and better kills that couldn't be pinned back to him, drugging his victims so they became suicidal, he could kill them without physically touching them."

"What?" Kelly felt like his head was in a fog. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Tell me about it, even Narcotics is scratching their heads on this one," Antonio replied. "Look, I'm not sure the State's Attorney has enough to actually make the case, but it doesn't matter, because if they don't, this guy will be extradited back to the East Coast and he'll be bounced between the two districts and he's going to rot in prison for the rest of his life for about three dozen murders. I know you don't think it's fair to qualify that as justice for Casey if it doesn't go to court here and he'd not even charged for what happened to Matt, but we have to take it as a win. It's all over, Kelly."

That news thrilled Severide, but he was left with one burning question.

"What about Casey?"

* * *

"We're going to take Matt off the drugs," Will told Kelly the next day. "He has a long recovery ahead of him and it's going to be painful, but I think he is strong enough now to endure it from here."

"Are you sure?" Kelly asked.

"He's one tough guy, Kelly, he's already had his skin blister and fall off three times in the last week without him being aware of it, we've made sure the burns didn't become infected, it's a good start, and I think he can withstand the next go-round in full consciousness," the doctor told him.

"How long is the recovery going to be?" Severide asked.

"He was burnt in waters near 140 degrees, at that temperature a full burn can set in in as little as 10 seconds, in which case he could've been fully recovered in three weeks. But we estimate he must've somehow endured the water for at least a minute, so it's going to be a couple months longer, the upside is he's not looking at any skin grafts or surgeries, in time the damage will repair itself, it's largely just going to be a waiting game."

"Yeah well, Casey was never any good at those," Kelly said, "but who is? Can I see him when you wake him up?"

"Sure. I'll have April come and get you when we're ready."

April came and got him half an hour later, it was the longest 30 minutes of his life.

* * *

Kelly stood beside Casey's bed as he watched the nurse peel off the bandages from his eyes. As far as his burns went, his face sustained the least amount of damage, but no chances had been taken that he'd lash out and damage his eyes while he was recovering. The drugs had been removed from his IV, the oxygen tubes had been removed from his nose, he was breathing fine on his own and slowly coming around. His eyelids slowly fluttered a few times, then his whole face scrunched up in a grimace of pain as a series of low moans escaped from his throat. He kept his eyes squinted nearly shut to block out the light, and he didn't seem able to really focus on anything he saw.

"Kelly?" he quietly asked. He slowly raised one bandaged hand and held it out, as if testing for the presence of his friend.

"It's alright, Casey, I'm here," Kelly said as he carefully took Matt's hand in his.

"Kelly?" Casey slowly blinked and looked around.

"It's okay, Casey, it's over, everything's going to be alright," Severide assured him. "It's alright, Casey, you're gonna be fine."

* * *

Kelly's eyes were closed as he lay in the hospital bed, his face covered in a sheet of perspiration, as he thrashed around and moaned as he weakly called out, "Casey...Casey...Casey."

Matt stood beside the bed and looked down at his friend who continued to call to him. He turned and looked at Hank Voight, who stood back against the dresser, his hands in his jacket pockets, who merely looked on curiously. Casey felt somebody on the other side of him elbow him in the ribs, he turned towards Antonio.

"Don't this guy _ever_ call you by your first name?" Dawson asked.

Casey snorted as he reached over and took Kelly's hand in his, "Never." He used his other hand to smooth back Kelly's short but sweat soaked hair, and told him, "Wake up, Kelly."

"Come on, Matt," Antonio told him, "you've been trying all day with no luck yet."

"Let him try," Voight told his detective, "we're not in a hurry."

Casey looked down at his best friend, tightened his grip on Kelly's hand, and said again, "Come on, Kelly, _wake up_."

Severide moaned in his sleep, then he opened his eyes, then closed them again, then jerked up in his bed and frantically looked around at the man standing over him. His eyes hadn't totally focused yet and half of what he saw was blurry, and the other half was doubled, but he reached over for Matt and was yelling at him, "Casey, get away from him, he's the murderer!" Kelly lunged over to the other side and pointed at Voight and said as he frantically pointed around the room, "You're the killer, you killed him and him and him and..." then he started to calm down, and realize where he was, and who he was with, and he looked around at all of them and asked, " _What_ happened?"

"That's what we've been waiting to find out," Antonio replied. "Do you know what day it is?"

"Er..." Kelly tried to think back. Had it all been a dream? Antonio and Voight were right there, just like they'd been in the dream. Yet he knew it must be a dream, because here Casey was, alive and well, no indication of any scalding burns anywhere on his body. "Uh...November 1st."

"2nd," Antonio replied, "you've been in the hospital for almost 30 hours."

"What?" Kelly blinked. "What happened?"

"You overdosed, genius, that's what," Voight told him.

" _What_?" Severide asked. "On what?"

"We finally got the official report back last night," Antonio answered, "Meth."

"What?" Severide shot up in the bed, "That's impossible!"

"Yeah, we already got that earful from Casey," Voight said. "You know how lucky you are we live in such modern times?"

Kelly shook his head as if trying to clear it from a fog. "What're you talking about?"

"We got a good idea _how_ you got the drugs when they did an ultrasound," Antonio told him, "you know these days those things are so accurate they can show what you ate? They found 12 candy bars in your system, they guessed at least _one_ was full sized. So that just leaves the question where the candy came from."

What they were saying didn't sound connected to reality, but it got Severide's mind racing, trying to tie back something they were saying to something he could remember. Then finally it came to him.

"First Watch was in charge of giving out the candy this year," he remembered, "there was a bag left when we came on shift, it hadn't been opened yet."

"We know," Antonio told him, "we already confiscated it and sent it to the lab for testing. Now I don't know how the bastards did it, but half the candy bars tested positive for meth. However, the doctor figures the bulk of what you OD'd on came from the full size bar, where'd it come from?"

"The vending machine," Kelly recalled, "I was getting tired of waiting on Herrmann to finish cooking lunch."

"We confiscated the rest of them too," Antonio told him, "We took all the food out of the firehouse."

Kelly laughed weakly, "Oh boy Third Watch must be pissed."

"And you didn't notice anything weird?" Voight asked.

Kelly shrugged weakly, "It tasted kind of off, I just figured it's been a couple years since they put anything new in the machine."

Casey got out a weak laugh and leaned over the rail and stroked a hand over the top of Severide's head, but he didn't say anything.

"We got lucky," Voight told Kelly. "Everybody else tested negative for drugs. Apparently you were the only one that ate the tainted candy."

Severide tried to think back to that time, but his mind was blank when it came to the details of what had happened.

"How did...what did...how'd you know?"

Casey finally spoke, "We knew _something_ was wrong, you started ranting and trying to kill everyone, then you fell on the floor in convulsions, the EMTs had to strap you to the backboard just to examine you, then they found out you had a high temperature and a heart about to stop beating completely."

Kelly took that newfound information in, but something else occurred to him. "Anybody else?" It didn't seem likely to him that whoever poisoned one bag of candy would stop there.

"A couple cases over at Lakeshore," Antonio said, "Kids who got the stuff in their trick-or-treat bags, _those_ Narcotics is having a harder time tracking down where they got it from because none of them stopped at the firehouse, but they didn't get as big of a dose as you did and they'll be going home before too long."

"Good," Kelly sighed.

Voight turned to Casey and told him, "Well, he's awake now, so you should be able to take it easy now."

Kelly looked up at Casey and asked, "What's he mean by that?"

"This guy has been here since they brought you in yesterday," Antonio told Severide as he pointed to Casey, "he never left for so much as a cup of coffee. 24 hours waiting for you to regain consciousness, I sure as hell hope you call him in the morning."

That comment drew a small chuckle out of Voight, who seemed to be watching all of this in amusement.

"Seriously, glad to see you're doing alright," Antonio reached over the rail and patted Kelly's knee, "we'll see ya round."

Severide watched as Antonio headed for the door, then Voight, then he felt his anxiety levels reach zenith when he saw Casey following behind them.

"Casey!" Kelly screamed as he shot up in the bed again. At any other time his dignity wouldn't permit him to let another person see him like this, but right now he was completely terrified of Casey being out of his sight after the dream he'd had.

To his surprise, Casey turned back towards him and explained, "I'm not going anywhere, Kelly." Instead, Matt shut the door, then headed back towards him. "But if you think I'm spending another night in this chair getting a sore back, you can think again. Move over."

It took Severide a few seconds to catch on, when he did he scooted over to one side of the bed and Casey swung his legs over the rail on the other side to climb in.

"One good thing about people getting fatter, it makes it a lot easier to fit two people in one of these beds," he commented as he drew the blanket up on himself. He turned towards Severide and saw the Squad lieutenant staring at him.

"Why're you looking at me like that?" he asked.

Kelly sucked in a breath and answered, "Oh man, Casey, I had the weirdest dream earlier, you wouldn't believe it."

"Try me," Casey replied.

Severide did, and some parts all the details came spilling out at once, other parts he had to force himself to keep going, but after about an hour, he'd told Casey all that he could remember of it, and through it all, Casey's face gave nothing away, it was impossible to gauge what he was thinking about the whole thing. Finally when Severide had finished, Casey told him, "They _do_ say meth is one hell of a drug. Kelly, I'm _fine_ , I'm alright, _you're_ alright, it's over."

"I know, Casey, I _know_ that...but it was all _so_ real."

"But I'm _here_ , Kelly, I'm here, it was just a dream. So go to sleep and don't worry about it."

Of course Casey knew that was easier said than done, but for the moment he got a kick out of ordering Severide around.

After a while, Kelly _did_ fall asleep, and so did Casey, but about an hour later, Severide shot up in the hospital bed with a pronounced, "AHHH!"

Casey woke up and reached over and grabbed Severide's hand with his and told him, "I'm right here, it's alright, it was just a dream."

Severide breathed heavily in and out for about a minute, but he finally calmed down and went back to sleep. A while later the same thing happened again, and once again Casey had to calm him down and tell him to go back to sleep, but he finally did, again.

* * *

Casey felt his neck getting stiff, he turned over in his sleep but found that didn't do any good either, his pillow had gone flat and whatever was under it was sharp and poking him. Not even bothering to open his eyes, he raised up both hands to slap some shape back into his pillow, and he did. The loud fleshy sound of the pillow getting hit was the first thing that drew him back to consciousness, the second thing was that his pillow moaned underneath him.

Casey opened his eyes and felt them widen to their limit as he realized Kelly was asleep facedown under him and Casey had been using his back as a pillow. He moved to get up, but then ultimately decided against it. Instead he looked at the man sleeping under him. What happened to Severide the other day scared the hell out of all of them, but nobody more than Casey. The doctors had treated Severide based on what they could piece together until the official diagnosis came back, but even once they had him detoxed he wouldn't wake up. He had a fever and thrashed around in his sleep and called out Casey's name, it was the _only_ thing he said, and though he didn't wake up when Casey talked to him or took Kelly's hand in his own, his presence somehow seemed to calm Kelly down, so he'd stayed with Severide until he finally woke up.

Matt dug his knees into the mattress on either side of Severide's body, and raised himself up on his hands so he could look down at the Squad lieutenant. Kelly never moved, he was still in a dead sleep, Casey had to admit Kelly looked kind of cute, when his mouth was shut anyway. Glancing to the door to make sure no one was watching, Casey leaned down and lightly kissed Severide on the back of his head. No response. At least Severide wasn't waking up screaming anymore. Casey was going to move over to the other side of the bed, but he decided against it, instead he slowly sank back down against Severide's back. He was too tired to move, in no mood to risk waking Severide up by shifting his weight around, and if he could be honest, though he would _never_ admit it to anyone, it was actually pretty comfortable like this. If Severide woke up and said anything, he could always claim he'd had no idea what he was doing while he was asleep. Casey folded his arms under him, and went back to using Severide as a full body pillow and shortly afterwards was sound asleep again.

* * *

Kelly moaned in his sleep. His back was killing him, he tried to roll over and get off his stomach, but he couldn't move, and that quickly jerked him wide awake in a panic. He tried to get up, but there was a weight pressing against his spine and he couldn't, then he realized that the weight was breathing in time with him. Severide craned his neck as far as he could to see what was holding him down, and he about turned his head upside down to see what was on his back, and saw it was Casey sound asleep. Severide wanted to laugh. He _also_ wanted to get Casey off of him so he could turn over. Slowly, he tried pushing up from the mattress with the added weight on top of him. It took a few tries but he finally got on his hands and knees, then slowly turned to the side and felt Matt slide off of him and land beside him on the bed.

He turned over on his side so he was facing Casey, the man never woke up, he never even moved. Kelly couldn't believe how real the dream had felt, and the stark contrast to how well Casey was, and he could see it with his own eyes. The biggest relief though was that he could actually _touch_ him, and he didn't have to worry about hurting Casey. Severide reached over and carefully put his arms around Casey, who never even stirred, and he slowly pulled the blonde man over towards him, until he held Casey tightly against him. Through it all Matt still never moved.

Kelly leaned over and kissed Casey on the top of his head and whispered to him, not sure if Casey could hear him or not, "I love you, buddy, thanks for staying with me."

It occurred to Kelly that Casey's skin was cool to the touch from falling asleep on top of the covers. He reached down, grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over both of them, then gradually fell back asleep.

* * *

"Oh boy am I glad to be out of that hospital," Kelly sighed as they walked out of Med the next morning.

"I don't know," Casey replied as he walked alongside him, "It's not so bad using one of those beds with someone else."

Severide looked at him, did a double take and got out a laugh as he reached over to elbow Casey in the ribs.

"Don't ever scare me like that again," Casey told him.

"I wasn't trying to."

"You don't _have_ to try," Casey replied. "So, you got anything planned for today?"

"We're off shift, I _never_ have anything planned," Kelly told him.

"Well I know you just spent two days in bed doing nothing," Matt said, "but how does going home and crashing on the couch sound?"

"Like a plan."

* * *

" _Stop_ staring at me," Casey told Severide that night as they were watching the game on TV. He was watching the game anyway, but he could feel Kelly's eyes boring a hole in the side of his head, he didn't even have to look at the man to know he was doing it, he'd been doing it off and on all day.

Severide blinked. "I can't help it. That dream was so real."

"Yeah well, you walking in on me in the shower, that sounds like a nightmare alright." He turned and looked at Kelly. "Do you want to see the thermostat for the water heater? Would that make you feel better?"

"You've actually _seen_ the water heater in this place?" Kelly asked.

"I had to replace it when I moved in two years ago," Casey answered. "You want to see it?"

Severide shook his head, "Nah, I'm good."

"I hope so," Casey told him. "You've hardly let me out of your sight all day, to be honest I'm getting nervous about going on shift tomorrow."

Kelly just laughed in response.

* * *

Casey opened his eyes and realized he was falling asleep on the couch, he blinked, and felt his eyelids grow heavy and close again for several seconds and felt his head sink down towards his chest, he forced himself to wake up, and he reached for the remote to shut off the TV. He turned to ask Severide a question and saw Kelly had already fallen asleep sitting up at his spot on the couch. Casey got up, then gave Kelly a slight shove and watched the other man fall lengthwise across the couch, his head making a perfect landing on the armrest. Yep, Severide was _out_ of it. Any other time Casey might be tempted to wake him up and tell him to go to his own room, but he knew Kelly had been through enough the last few days and decided to just leave him be and let him rest. He grabbed the blanket draped over the back of the couch, unfolded it and draped it over Kelly, who didn't even move. Casey quietly groaned as he stretched his arms up over his head, then groaned louder as he felt something jerk and pop in his back, then he lowered his arms, turned and left the room to go to bed himself.

* * *

Kelly woke up and the first thing he saw was the back of the couch. He looked over towards the windows and saw it was just starting to get light out. It must've been morning, but he didn't remember falling asleep. He moved under the blanket, and turned over onto his other side, and he saw something that made him freeze where he was.

Casey was asleep on the floor not five feet from the couch. Apparently sometime during the night he'd gotten a pillow and a blanket and put together a makeshift bed on the floor. He was also asleep on his side, facing towards Kelly, he had one arm wrapped over the pillow, and Severide noticed he had his other arm outstretched towards him.

Severide lay on the couch for a minute and just stared at Casey, trying to figure out what it meant. He'd figured that Casey would've gone up to bed last night, so why this?

" _Stop_ staring at me," Casey grumbled without opening his eyes.

Severide fell back against the couch and laughed, "How'd you know?"

"Your breathing," Casey opened his eyes.

"How long have you been awake?"

Casey checked his watch, "About 15 minutes."

"What're you doing down there?" Kelly asked.

"Well..." Casey looked down at the carpet.

Severide blinked as he realized what Casey wasn't saying. If he'd woken up in the night freaking out from another nightmare, and Casey was right there on the floor and Kelly could see for himself that he was alright, that no doubt would've been a lot less trouble than going upstairs and Severide waking up alone, temporarily grappling with what was reality and what was just a dream. And possibly the reverse was true too, what Casey had gone through had been a real life nightmare watching him in the hospital, and just because Casey hadn't woken up screaming that night in the hospital didn't mean he hadn't been having his own share of nightmares, and just maybe this had been for his own peace of mind too, if _he_ woke up in the night he could see Severide and know that he was alright too.

Kelly pushed back the blanket and scooted onto the floor beside Casey.

"Thanks, buddy," he said as he wrapped an arm around Casey's back and squeezed him tight, thankful that he was able to.

Casey groaned as he felt the air get knocked out of him, but he didn't say anything. Instead he reached around and clapped a hand on Severide's back, so glad to be out of the hospital, and to know the drugs Severide ingested hadn't done any permanent damage. It was unlikely that the cops would ever find out who had been responsible, but all Matt cared about was that Severide was okay and nobody else had been harmed.

"Come on," he finally said, breaking the silence, "we gotta get ready for work, we go on shift in little over an hour."

Almost reluctantly, Severide finally let go of Casey.

* * *

Casey slammed the door to his truck shut and walked over to Severide's Mustang he was just getting out of.

"So are you alright?" he asked. He thought he'd better be clear about that before they actually started shift. "You're not going to be staring at me the whole time we're here, are you?"

Kelly managed to suppress the laugh but wasn't as successful with the smirk on his face, "Yeah I'm fine."

"Good," Casey replied. "Hey, I'm glad you're okay."

Severide knew it sounded weird since Casey had never really been in any danger and that had all just been a drug induced nightmare, but he responded, "I'm glad you are too."

"There's something I gotta ask you though," Casey told him.

"What's that?"

" _Twelve_ candy bars?"

Severide laughed. Casey just looked at him like he'd just been declared the 7th wonder of the world.

"Do you have a tapeworm or something?" he asked.

"Stop," Severide playfully jabbed at him.

"Come on, let's go," Casey nodded towards the station house. "I'm sure the others are anxious to welcome you back."


End file.
